adventures with M&E part I - Czech Republic

Now that I'm in Europe, there are some obvious pros and cons compared to travel in Central and Southeast Asia. Pro: you can drink the tap water and flush toilet paper! Con: good lord, everything's so damn expensive!! Pro: Europe in the fall is quite gorgeous. Con: I miss wandering around in shorts/tshirts and my sandals, chowing down on cheap street food. But, the really big pro is that Europe is closer to the US! This means that it is now feasible for friends from the states to take a week off of work and come visit, whereas if they did that while I was in Southeast Asia, they'd spend the majority of their time on the plane.

So, my first visitors were Marla and Elisa, friends from DC who I met up with in Prague. I hadn't seen them since I'd left DC 8 months ago, so it was great to get the chance to see them. We spent our week and a half hanging out - chilling at cafes, enjoying the occasional lunchtime beer, and the more frequent dinner-time beer, and generally enjoying each others' company. Oh, and I guess we saw some historical stuff too. I'll let the pictures/captions do the explaining. I had too many good pictures from our trip to cull down into a single entry, so you get two entries instead - lucky you!! Part one covers the first 5 days of our trip, which we spent in the Czech Republic.

we're in Prague, time to celebrate with some delicious local beer for lunch!

Prague's old town looked great lit up at night

one night we saw that they were having a concert at a local church, and they were playing my favorite piece of classical music (Vivaldi's Spring). There's something really cool about going to concerts in Europe, where all of that stuff was written in the first place.

while in Prague I tried to track down some distant relatives. My great-great grandparents, the Veverkas, had a hotel/restaurant in Prague. With a google search I found a restaurant named U Veverky. While it ended up not being the same place, it did have delicious Czech food, so I'll still call that a win.

Elisa and I went on a daytrip to check out a local castle, Karlstejn. Good times.

in Kutna Hora, they have a church decorated with human bones - over 40,000 of them! It's crazy! Here's a coat of arms made with human arms. (hah, sorry, couldn't avoid the play on words)

what a great spot for lunch. Life is good.

Elisa and Marla peeking out from a window in the Cesky Krumlov castle

artsy shot of Cesky Krumlov viewed through an arch-window

Marla, Elisa, and I celebrate our last night in the Czech republic with some fancy cocktails