First things first: Emily Shreves turned 18 today! Not a bad way to spend your birthday :) SO glad you are a part of our Roadrunner Family.
So to put our full day of sight-seeing into perspective, most of our watches showed upwards of 20,000 steps yesterday -- that's 9ish miles of walking around Prague. We started at our hotel, making our way first to the John Lennon Wall en route to the Prague Castle.
After John Lennon's assassination in 1980 -- and yes parents, many of your daughters did not know who John Lennon is, so perhaps pull out those LPs and give them a quick music education when they return -- he became a symbol of peace for many young people in Czech and an artist painted his portrait and song lyrics on a wall. Since then, the wall has been a consistent place for demonstration and resistance, most prominently while under the communist regime. Today it is still a symbol of hope and change.
From there we hiked to the Prague Castle, which is the home of the president -- think Czech version of the White House. We climbed about 1,000,000 stairs to get there but once on top of the "hill" we caught the changing of the guard and were able to enter St. Vitas Cathedral; the largest and most important place of worship in Prague.
It was build in 930 and is contains the tombs of many Roman Emperors and Bohemian Kings. It's huge, old, and beautiful. I am sure there are better adjectives to describe it, but instead photos may be a better way to explain how breathtaking it is.
Leaving the castle, we crossed the St. Charles bridge -- widely praised as on of the most famous bridges in Europe. It was built in 1402 to span the Vlatava River and its history is filled with tons of legend and lore. Most notably, the two myths of St. John Nepomuk. The long short of it is that King Wenceslaus thought his wife was cheating on him, so he had her go to confession. The priest, St. John, refused to tell the king what his wife confessed, so he had him killed and threw his body off the bridge and into the river. When his body touched the river, five stars appeared.
This legend resulted in two local customs that all of us adhered to:
1. Touch the St. John statue and you will return to Prague
2. Touch all five stars on the St. John statue and your wish will come true
Here are a few more pictures from our sight-seeing adventures around Prague.
As if that wasn't a full enough day, we returned to the hotel quickly to change and then headed to the Praha Eagles stadium to play the Eagles Women's team. Your Roadies won in dominant fashion and we hope you enjoyed the in-game commentary and guest appearances from the team :)
After the game, the Eagles invited the team to stay at the facility for a BBQ dinner. We all had a great time talking with and learning from each other.
Tomorrow will be a very busy day as we travel to Slovenia with a quick 3-hour stop in Vienna for lunch and some sight-seeing. We won't have great WiFi until we get to the hotel, so I apologize that the blog will be a day behind -- hopefully you'll forgive us!
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