A lot has changed since my last blog and I have a lot of updating to do!
First of all, I left my job at EssTec and took at position at Haworth.
More money, less hours, more niceties. I love it here.
I put in my notice at EssTec, told them I was done May 6th, had 2 weeks off with no work, started my job at Haworth, and then went on vacation for 2 weeks. I tried to negotiate with them to have me start after our trip, but they didn't want to do that. That's ok, because it all worked out.
We left Kzoo airport on Saturday evening, June 11. The flight was pretty standard. No delays or cancelations. We arrived in Prague, early afternoon on June 12. We got our luggage, bought our public transportation passes, hopped on the 119 bus, made it to the metro, rode the metro to Namesti Miru and walked to our apartment. It was a long day getting there and we were jet lagged pretty bad, but we didn't care. We had made it!
From our apartment, we walked around the neighborhood looking at where I lived for 3 months over 12 years ago when I done a study abroad while getting my Master's degree at GVSU. From Náměsti Míru, we walked to Vyšehrad - my favorite area of Prague. We didn't do too much walking day one since we were exhausted and just needed to rest.
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| The entrance to our apartment. Very nice inside |
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| It's very typically that places will have a washer, but no dryer. |
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| Náměsti Míru - Square of Peace. I lived near this square when I was in Prague back in 2010. |
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| Vyšehrod - My favorite Neighborhood in Prague |
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| Some of the most intact walls of the old fortified city can be found in Vyšehrod. Soldiers would shoot from these windows |
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| Looking over the Vltava River from Vyšehrod |
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| Palacheho Naměsti = I am a bad tourist because I don´t remember what this statue stood for! |
Monday, June 13th
June 13: Walked from our apartment towards old town. Walked down the main corridor from Muzeum to Old Town Square. Went to a Banksy art exhibit. Made it to the Astrological clock and old town square. Walked to the powder tower and the national theater. We needed to get out of the rain and go to the bathroom so we went to the mall near there. Walking into the mall is funny because it is literally like you are walking through a portal back to America. We did some shopping at my favorite European store S.Oliver. I wish they had those stores in America. After we shopped and the rain stopped, we walked back towards the clock. Made it over Karlov Most. Checked out where my old school used to be - The Anglo American university. It's no longer in that building. Made it over to the Lennon wall. Had dinner at a restaurant along the Valtav River. Done for the day!
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| The National Muzeum. Jade and I toured this back in 2010. It's just a bunch of stuffed animals...like the museum in the movie Night at the Museum |
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| This is a great outdoor year around market. They sell all sorts of tourist stuff there. I know we got a snack of fruit and some kind of strong hot wine drink |
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| The Banksy exhibition was really interesting. I wish his pieces were not replications...it would have been cool is any of them were real. But that may not be possible since he is a graffiti artist |
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| The astronomical Clock. Every hour on the hour it chimes and the 12 apostles come out of the top windows. Kind of like a cuckoo cuckoo clock |
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| Staroměske naměsti = old town square |
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| Statue of Jan Hus = A memorial in honor of him because he fought against the Catholics |
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| House of the Black Madonna. |
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| The Powder Tower. Part of the old fortified city boundary |
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| National Theater |
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| Everyone was touching this statue in the same place, so we joined in. Cloak of Conscience statue. |
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| Looking at the castle and St. Vitus Cathedral from across the Valtava River |
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| Crossing the Charles Bridge (Karlov Most) |
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| This WAS where my school was located 12 years ago. |
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| The Lennon Wall. People write messages of peace here. |
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| There was a concert going on in the park nearby. It was in support of Ukraine |
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| You can see the 'Dancing House' in the distance |
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| The Dancing House |
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| The restaurant we dined at |
June 14th: Walked up to the castle from Náměsti Míru. We visited St. Vitus cathedral and The Golden Lane. I'm not sure how I was able to capture the Golden Lane picture with no people, because the day we went to the castle was also the day that a TON of school kids were there for class tours. It was jam packed with kids and teachers. After we fought our way through the castle and St. Vitus cathedral, we headed to the Strahov monastery library and church. From there, we walked to the Petrin and flower garden. We passed by the US Embassy area. And finally, we visited the church with the infant Jesus.
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| The Golden Lane: I never got a chance to visit these homes when I lived here in 2010 because they were under restoration for the entire summer. They are teeeeeeeny homes that workers once lived in. Now they are all souvenir shops |
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| Inside of St. Vitus Cathedral |
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| These are called Trdelniks. They take dough, wrap it around a post and cook it, then fill it with ice cream or Nutella or different fillings depending on where you purchase them. I "thought" this was a common Czech food. However, after our trip we did some reading and found out that this is more of a touristy thing, not really something that local Czechs would make and eat. |
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| Just outside of the castle entrance, there were some booths set up selling souvenirs and food. We bought some stuff from a black smith that had made some really cool bells from metal. |
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| Inside the church at the Strahov Monatery. These churches were made to be so grand and intimidating to scare the bejesus INTO people. To make people scared so that they would worship Jesus and God and most importantly give money to the church. |
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| The Baroque Library at the Strahov Monastery. We were not allowed to enter the room, we could only view it from the entrance. I wish we could have gotten a closer look. Amazing! |
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| The Petrin. We did not go to the top, because the crowds were insane and I didn't want to be in that tight of a space with a bunch of potentially sick people. |
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| These beautiful flower gardens were in full bloom when we were here! |
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| The US embassy in Prague showing our support for Ukraine. |
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| This is an example of the clothes that they have put on the Baby Jesus |
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Carmelite Church of Our Lady of Victories in Malá Strana, Prague
I don't want to downplay someone's religious beliefs, but to me this is nothing but a doll in a dress. Many people feel otherwise. A lot of people were praying to this sculpture. |
June 15th: We walked to the Klementinum, Jewish Cemetery, metronome, and walked to the Ukrainian embassy home. Somehow got on the metro and rode all the way to Olsanske Hrbitovy - cemetery by Flora.
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We were not allowed to enter this library because of all the delicate and precious materials. Apparently, you are allowed to 'sign out' books for research. But you have to wear gloves while handling them and you are not allowed to take them from the library. The room has a controlled atmosphere to keep the temperature and humidity constant. The doors and windows are blocked out so that sunlight will not destroy the materials inside. You can only see this library during the tour and they open the doors for literally a few minutes at a time so that the tour group can get pictures and then the doors automatically close again. I wish I could have captured the smell of this room in a bottle. The oldest paper/book/library smell I have ever smelled.
The Jewish Cemetery
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While walking around the Jewish cemetery, there were many people praying. The men have to wear a yarmulke out of respect.
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| Me telling Gary that it's not that far to walk |
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The Metronome. It was not in operation when we were there. In this spot there use to be a large statue of Joseph Stalin prior to the Velvet Revolution. The people tore that statue down and replaced it with the metronome.
 | | I wanted to visit the Ukraine Embassy in Prague when we were there. We actually saw a lot of people going in and out of the home. It looked like 2 houses were part of the complex. People had left flowers there out of respect. The US embassy is closer to the castle. However, we walked by the home where the US ambassador to Prague lives and that places looked like Fort Knox. I didn't even want to pause to take a picture! |
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| Yes, another cemetery. But they are so interesting! This cemetery is by the metro stop Flora. Olsanske Hrbitovy It is like a huge park. Some graves are still maintained very well. Others are just overgrown with ivy. |
June 16: Travel to Norway: The race was not until Saturday evening, but I didn't want to go too far out of town before the race. The first couple of days there we just walked around the little town of Tromso and we went to the runner expo on Friday
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| Showing how far North we were! |
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| I learned a couple of words here: Tusen Tak! Which means Thank you very much. It was the only saying I could easily remember so I used it all the time. Most people would smile at me when I said it....probably because they could tell I had a terrible accent! haha |
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| I loved our little cabin! It had a small kitchen to make meals too. We had to rent a car in Norway because they don't have a metro system like Prague does. |
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| View outside of our little cabin. I loved it! |
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| The Arctic Cathedral |
Friday, June 17th: Walk around Tromso, Packet pickup in town
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| World's most Northern Lutheran Cathedral |
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| Outside the Runner Expo |
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| There is an extensive system of highway tunnels that run underground around the island of Tromso. Of course we got lost in them because your cell phone doesn't work down there and you don't know where you are going! haha |
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| You can see the Arctic Cathedral across the water |
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| After the Runner expo on Friday, we decided to just take the car and drive around and look at scenery. |
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| Picture taken at Kvaloysletta Fjaerapark |
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| At one point we stopped to take some pictures of the mountains and running water and discovered that there was a trail to follow! I could have followed it for miles. It looked just like this. Rushing water and mountains. |
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| I loved these little village towns. Ersfjordbotn, Norway |
The problem that we noticed is that we were used to the light of day dictating when your day is done. The sun never went down when we were there and it felt like we could just keep going and going because it never got dark!
Saturday, June 18th: Marathon day! Because this was the Midnight Sun Marathon, the marathon did not start until 8pm at night. We had all day to hang out before hand. We slept in, ate and then walked to the Fjellheisen which was a cable care that took us to the top of this mountain that overlooked Tromso.
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| Overlooking Tromso. For the Marathon I end up running over that bridge twice. |
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| Snow in June! |
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| We met a couple from California that took our picture. |
After spending a couple of hours at the top of the mountain, we headed back down and back to our cabin to get ready for the run. The 'mini' marathon started at 6pm. I bullied Gary into running the 4.2k race. We ran slow and easy, since I still had to run a full marathon later.
I have to mention that after my run in Traverse City, I had started getting some pains in my left hip along with some weird bruising. At first I didn't think too much of it. I figured I would take it easy between the Bayshore Marathon at the end of May and the Tromso Marathon in mid-June. But something wasn't quite right. My hip felt fine the entire time we had been walking in Prague and Norway. We walked at least 10 miles a day, every day and I had no problems. After running the mini marathon with Gary, I thought I would be ok going into the marathon. I was wrong.
We finished the 4.2km race!
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| Excited and nervous. |
The race started at 8pm at night. Everything was fine at the start. However, around mile 5-6, the pain in my hip intensified. From that moment on until the very end of the race I was in extreme pain. It felt like someone was stabbing a knife vertically into my hip. I wanted to stop so bad, but every time I stopped to walk and then started running again just made it worse. All I could do was endure the pain and finish the race no matter what. It was a beautiful course. We ran all along the water way. There were people cheering and waving Norway flags. I heard the locals cheering and clapping the same thing over and over. It sounded like "Hey Ya! Hey Ya!" I think it translated to "go!"
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| HEIA! See the signs above. That is what everyone was shouting and clapping when we ran by spectators. |
Because my hip was killing me, I ran really slow. I ended up finishing the race in about 4hrs 45 min. I think it was about 1:30 or 2am when I finished. As soon as I crossed the line, I hobbled to a place where I could sit down. Gary found me and helped me get back to the car. I was hurting pretty bad. At that time, I had already started to bruise! We got back to the cabin, I took a shower and fell into bed dead tired. My left side hurt so bad I could not lay on it. This would be the start of some serious P.T., targeted exercises, x-rays and MRIs. The long and short of it is, when we got back to the States, I started making appointments for my hip. The diagnosis was that I tore my labrum in my left hip and I have some hip dysplasia. There is really nothing to do other than strengthen the muscles and take long rests in between marathons.
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| My marathon medal and my 'mini' marathon medal. |
June 19th: Drive around Norway in the countryside
The next day we got up super late, had some food and decided to just take the car and drive around the Norway countryside. I was still pretty sore from my race, so sitting in the car was fine with me.
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| It's just so beautiful!! |
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| This is the second time in my life that I have seen a Thatched roof on a house! |
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| We got some paper money for Norway, just in case. For the most part we used our credit cards just fine. 1 USD is about 10 Norwegian Kroner |
June 20th: Travel day Back to Prague. Nothing exciting except for getting our selves back to Prague and into our 'new' apartment. This time we stayed in the Hradčanska area up behind the Castle. Our apartment was above a Potraviny. That made it convenient because we could run downstairs to get food or water whenever we needed.
June 21st: Walking around Prague. We visited: The Prague Zoo, Trojsky Zamek Palace, Black Light Theater, Vyšehrad church and cemetery.
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| Yes these are two 'peeing' statues that Gary had to see. haha |
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| The skinniest street in Prague. There's a stoplight that tells you when you can go because it's too narrow to pass people on the stairs. |
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| I think the only way this car was able to park in this spot is with magic. |
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| Kitty cafe! |
June 23rd: We decided to take one more side trip before we had to head back to the States. We ended up taking the train from Prague to Dresden, Germany for one overnight stay. We left all of our stuff in our apartment in Prague and decided to only take what we could stuff in our backpacks. We knew from experience that the train isles are super narrow and it's a pain in the arse to try and drag your luggage up and down the isles. Plus, if you try and go on the cheap, like we did, we did not reserve seats. When you don't reserve seats, you have to walk around until you find one that is open. Sometimes the seats will be open for a few stops before the people who reserved them get on the train. Then you have to kick out people who are sitting in your seats. It's a whole shit show really. Since Prague was the first stop on the train, we got in and specifically found seats that had no reservations for the entire train ride.
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| The main walkway from the Dresden Hauptbanhof to the old town square area. |
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| The old town square of Dresden |
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| Frauenkirche - Church that was reconstructed after WWII. Apparently, it sat in a pile of rubble until sometime in the 1990s. Then they decided to reconstruct it. The dark bricks are original. The light bricks are reconstructed. This side is mostly reconstructed, but some of the other sides have more original bricks on them |
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| This bit of wall was original to the Frauenkirche Church |
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| The original cross that was on top of the church when it was bombed in WWII |
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| We passed by a bakery that was giving out free pieces of Stollen. That guy had to be sweating to death because it was blazing hot that day! |
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| One of the first things we did in Dresden was go to the Green Vault Museum. You were not allowed to take pictures, so the above picture is one of the only pictures I snuck because I was afraid to get kicked out. It was flipping amazing!!!! I guess even though the building was hit in WWII, they did not lose any treasures. There were jewels, objects carved out of ivory. I wish so bad I could have taken pictures. The craziest thing, is that there was a jewel heist in 2019!! They had a display talking about the heist and they actually still had the blank spaces in the cabinets where the stolen jewels once sat. It was strange because they targeted a very specific area of the museum. They only took white diamonds. They only broke into one specific display case. It's sad because those diamonds are probably long gone and will never be recovered. |
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| Nighttime along the Elbe River |
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| Gary knew all about this, but I did not. Apparently, this little guy is the cross walk image that they used during the communist era. Now he's like a funny guy that you can buy souvenirs of on mugs and stuff. |
June 24th - June 25th. We headed back to Prague on Friday, June 24th. Our train ride back to Prague was quite different from the train ride there. The train started in Berlin, so by the time it reached Dresden, it was packed. Luckily, Gary and I were able to find empty seats, but they were in different train rooms. No biggie really. There was a "stag party" on the train headed to Prague and by the time we reached our destination they were super loud and wasted. I tried getting a picture of them, but couldn't without them seeing me! haha.
Once we made it back to our apartment, we just packed and crashed for the night. We needed a vacation from our vacation.
The next morning, we made our way to the Prague airport without incident. We flew from Prague to Amsterdam. Amsterdam was a complete cluster. We made it through all the check points just fine, but there were delays with the plane for some reason. At that point, I knew we were going to miss our connection in Detroit. The flight across the pond was fine, no major hiccups there. When we landed in Detroit, we had to pick up our luggage and go through customs. Everyone was in a shit panic to try and make their connector flights. We already knew it was a lost cause. We got through everything and went directly to the counter to rebook our flight. Luckily, there was another flight just 2 hrs later from Detroit to Kzoo.
We rechecked our bags and made our way to the gate to hangout until our flight was ready to leave. As we were sitting there, they kept coming over the speaker to tell us that our flight was delayed....first 20 min then 30 min. I felt like I was trapped in some kind of Twilight Zone that I could not get out of. Eventually, they told us we would be boarding...I think it was an hour later than we originally thought. I didn't care, at least we were on the plane. The flight should have only taken about 30 min. However, they came over the speaker and let us know that the plane HAD TOO MUCH FUEL and we could not land with that much fuel so we had to fly around and burn off enough to land. The 30 min flight turned in to over an hour. Once we landed, we still had to drive an hour home. I was fried and told Gary to drive. We get to my jeep and he goes "OH MY GOD!". I thought at first that someone had smashed into my jeep. But then he shows me that someone ducked me. At least that made me smile after a long and terrible day of travelling. As we are driving home, I literally said to Gary, "The only thing that would prevent us from getting home is if we hit a deer". I just had a super bad feeling. We were about 2 miles from home and Gary stopped dead in the road. My eyes were so blurry from sleeping in my contacts that I asked him why he stopped. He said, 'There's a deer in the middle of road". Sure enough, she was just standing there not moving. Thank God he drove because I did not see her!
Finally, we made it home!!! Until Next Time Prague!
