LAST DAY IN PRAGUE

On, this, our last day in Prague, we went to the Trade Center museum.  The way I understood it, this museum was built to be a trade center under communism, and then became a museum later.  They have a large collection of Czech art, but nothing very exciting.  However, they have installed a huge exhibit of Alfonse Mucha's Slavic History which is quite fantastic.  I'm putting in a few pictures, but they didn't come out very well.  

Following that we visited the Spanish Synagogue, which is built in the moorish style popular in the late 1800s. Many people think it was a Sephardic Congregation, but it wasn't.  They were just very up to date in their architectural tastes for the time.  

After that I walked around town, had a loaf of bread and a double gelato, found the memorial to Jan (forgot his last name) who immolated himself in Wenceslaus Square during the Prague riots in 1968.  It's very small.  

We went out to our farewell dinner tonight at a nice restaurant on the other side of the bridge (the castle side) and walked across the bridge to get there.  

I have really loved this trip.  

MUSIC, MUSIC, MUSIC

This morning we had a fascinating lecture on Czech music from plainchant to the present.

Our instructor was wonderful. He's an American who moved here in 1992 or so for a year to study early Czech music and forgot to go home. I learned a lot. 

Since we are going to see Don Giovanni tonight, our guide asked  that he spend extra time on Mozart. Yawn. This group is really a bunch of music lovers and they already know everything they ever wanted to know about Mozart. They are mostly all opera fans. When the talk turns to opera, everybody has their favorites, they know singers, conductors, scores, libretti, and probably costume designers. 

They all know I'm a musician, so the other day they were talking about opera and there must have been some REALLY obscure fact that no one in the group knew, (I wasn't in the group) and I heard someone say, "oh, Alex probably knows."  I'm the least likely person to have a clue about it. Apparently, though, it proves the point that if you keep your mouth shut, nobody knows you're an idiot. 

I walked up to the castle hill in the afternoon which is not very far from our hotel and listen to the musicians and checked out all the tsachkas vendors were selling on the bridge.  

Don Giovanni turned out to be a lot of fun, and someways and very interesting and others. It was done in modern dress sort of nouveau Italian. Very sparse scenery and people dressed all alike. You know how easy that makes it for me to tell people apart. But I did manage to stay through the whole thing and even enjoyed the second half. Of course there were things I missed since I had a couple of naps during the first half

KING AND CASTLE

Today we started our day with a bus trip up to the castle area. In discussing things with our bus mates we found that a few people were very disappointed in the quality of performances, both the ballet and the black light show, and at least one other person got really bad directions from our guide about how to get somewhere. 

We had a brief but interesting tour of St Vitus church,

St. Vitus' dance , a seizure disorder, I think, being named for him because he didn't die the first time they tried to kill him and he kept twitching so they had to kill him again. 

We learned that brides come here all the time for pictures, even though they don't get married in Prague  

Cool windows in this church, including one painted by Mucha.

 

The top of the castle hill is pretty interesting, but not the part where we were. We went to a museum which had mostly portraits, and they were mostly dark and hard to see. The captions were pretty interesting because they made you wonder who these people had any children with fewer than three arms, given how many of them had parents who were cousins and then married a cousin themselves. 

We had lunch in an upper room of this palace museum, and that was followed by a concert. The concert was a number of recognizable works by famous composers arranged for flute viola and piano. They actually worked pretty well. I think the viola player was the arranger. The pianist and violist were pretty good, but while the flutist could play lots of notes, she couldn't do it with anything even I could recognize as an acceptable tone, and I'm pretty accepting. I have a suspicion that they do this 1-hour concert twice or three times a day, because while we were downstairs afterwards, I heard it start again. 

The other event they had scheduled for us was a tasting of Czech wine. I can only say it's a good thing their economy isn't dependent on the quality of the wine. There's a reason they drink beer here. 

We had the rest of the day free, and I would have walked home from the castle, but I didn't dress warmly enough today, because it was supposed to be 78 but instead it was about 68 and raining.  So I had to come back on the bus, and when we got here, the maids were cleaning our room, and we couldn't get in for a half hour to change our clothes. 

We were going to a guitar concert tonight, so I had to go reconnoiter where it was, and it's fortunate I did, because I thought it was someplace totally different. And coming back I got so lost that I felt like I should be presenting stone tablets by the time I got back to the room. I was so lost I even had a moment or two of nervousness, which being lost seldom brings out in me because I usually finally come to something I know (as I did today) and I expect that will happen. 

The guitar concert was wonderful. It was in an art gallery, so it was pretty small and crowded, and I'd say it was about 50-60 people. Tourists, but no tour groups. The performers were a husband and wife duo, and they were really wonderful.  They played some early, some classical, and some South American. 

We shared a pizza on our way back to the hotel. 

BEAUTIFUL PRAGUE AND ART NOUVEAU

Today is our first day in Prague. We started our day with a lecture in the lecture room from an architectural historian. She talked about various types of Czeck architecture and showed us examples. Then we went on a walkabout and checked out the main Street in the old town area, which is an extension of Wenceslas square.

We went to see the astronomical clock and then we had lunch at the City Hall.

City Hall means something entirely different here than it does at home. It is a hall, a concert venue, that belongs to the city.  This one is an absolutely fabulous art nouveau building both inside and out and has been meticulously maintained since it was built.  

We had lunch in the cafe first, which was quite delicious, and another lovely room in which to eat,  this one in Art Nouveau style rather than Baroque.

 Following our lunch, we had a private tour of the building

which was absolutely fabulous and it is going to strain to me in credibly not to post every single picture of every single heater vent and

anything else I saw because the decorations were all so lovely.

Following that we walked back to our hotel, stopped at the Mucha museum, stopped and got some cash, and came back to the hotel. 

Tonight we went to see a marionette show of Mozart's Don Giovanni.  This is something I would not have done had not someone we were talking to over breakfast before we got on the plane to come here told us how delightful this was. And it was. They have one puppet who represents Mozart, and who is the orchestra conductor. Then they have marionettes which are all the other characters in the opera Don Giovanni. They say it's the complete opera as it was originally presented here in Prague, but zoe remembers it differently so it may have changed over the years. We are actually going to see the Don Giovanni real opera in its original opera house,the Estate opera house, Wednesday night.  This one was hilariously funny. 

LAST DAY IN BUDAPEST

Today was another fascinating day and packed with things to do. This is our last day in Budapest. We started our day breakfast with a lecture on economics of Hungary by a guy who actually is a PhD economist and who knows a lot about it. He is definitely a European-style leftist. He has lived in the United States for number of years speaks excellent English and is knowledgeable about American politics as well as Hungarian.

When the lecture was over Zoe and I went to the New York Café

for lunch. It is an elegant baroque-style cafe which can also handle about a couple of hundred visitors at a time.

We both had soup and ice cream,both of which were fresh and delicious and artfully presented. The only downside of this was that we were sitting next to the piano player, who continued to come over to our table to ask if we wanted any specific songs played, which we said no, and then brought over his CDs to see if we would like to buy one. No to that also. His typical set list included a piece from the musical a pop song and then something that was yiddish or klesmer or otherwise Jewish.  His repertoire of pop songs was OK but it was clear that he had learned them from sheet music and never heard them played.

Following our elegant lunch we boarded the streetcar and went to the opera house.

There are two opera houses in Budapest, we went to the big Baroque one.  

We took the afternoon tour which was very interesting. We also met a number of our tour group in the lobby waiting for the same tour.

After that tour Zoe and I walked back to the hotel and then I walked down to Saint Stephen's Cathedral which is another very elegant Baroque place but I was unable to see much of it because there was a wedding there and they had most of the main part of the church blocked off.

And yet there's more!

Tonight our farewell dinner included a boat trip on the Danube just sailing around looking at the lights of Budapest which are absolutely beautiful at night.  

A boat trip allows you to see both sides of the river.  Then we did something that I never even knew about which was to visit Saint Margaret's Island

which is in the middle of the river in Budapest, and they have a musical fountain there that does music with colors. It was very fun.  

And then on the bus back to the hotel we had one more stop on the Buda side to see another lovely view of Pest.

A BAROQUE PALACE, A GREAT LUNCH AND A STRIP SHOW

Today we had a morning trip to a palace  called Godollo, 

which is the largest Baroque palace in Hungary and the second biggest palace after Versailles.  This is a change for Hungary, because most of the things we've been shown are the third largest, the third most important, the third this or that.  I guess if this were a horse race,Hungary would be the place of show.

This is quite a beautiful palace and if I got my information right, which has about a 50% probability, it's from the 19th century. And the king and queen who lived here the most were the son and daughter-in-law of Queen Maria Teresa. The queen who lived here was named Elisabeth, and is much beloved by the Hungarian people because she liked Hungary, and she learned to speak Hungarian and raised one of her daughters as a Hungarian, even though these people were all from the house of Hapsburg, meaning they were more Germanic.  It's quite a pretty palace. I particularly like the fact that the Queen's rooms were purple, because that was her favorite color.

She is the queen who was stabbed to death and it wasn't because anybody didn't like her, she was stabbed by an Italian anarchist who just wanted to find someone from a royal family to stab and she happened to be available.   When it was no longer used as a palace, it became a barracks for Soviet soldiers, and then an old peoples home, neither of which added to the charm of the place. In the 1990s it was refurbished and used as a meeting place for European union meetings the year Hungary was president of the European Union, or leader or whatever.

Following this tour, we went to a famous restaurant called Gundel, which is near the Heroes' Square.  I thought perhaps this was just a sort of a con game to tell us this was a famous high-class restaurant, but in fact it really was. And they didn't have us sitting at some big table in the back room they had us all at smaller tables around the dining room.  And the food was delicious, in a kind of more Continental than Hungarian way.  

Then it appeared that it was going to rain so we came back to the hotel to get our umbrellas and then we were going to take a walking tour downtown, but I decided not to go. After I was at the hotel for about an hour I decided to go anyway.

I tried to walk down to where we had taken our tour the first night I was here and I thought I was on the right track but I was paying attention to where I was going so that if I wasn't I could retrace my steps. I kept getting deeper and deeper into places that I didn't recognize, and finally I thought it's going to take me forever to get back because I made so many turns, But then I saw a kind of a big street and I thought maybe I should see if that is the street I recognize. Not that I bothered to learn the names of yet a single street. Anyway, as I was walking toward that street I went past something about a half hour ago because apparently I had walked in some giant circle, Even though I thought that I was continually getting closer to the river. So actually I thought I had a long walk home but I was halfway there.  Zoe and I got all bundled up and decided to go check out a store where I thought she might like the watches, and she was dying of the heat before we got back. Which was fine with me because I got to put on her coat. Including her coat I had on five layers of clothing. A shirt, a shirt over that, a sweater over that, my coat, and finally her coat.   My striptease pictures follow. 

Water (and) music

Today was delicious, nutritious, and relaxing. 

We started our day with a trip to the Buda side where we saw the oldest buildings, churches, government buildings, etc, of the town and then had a wonderful visit to the museum of musical instruments. They have a plethora of old forte pianos a couple of harps, various viols and a positive organ. They also had some cembalos which were in several phases of evolution. The real treat was that we got to hear a wunderkind who played both violin and piano on a professional level. He started out with a Paganini caprice, and at the end, he played a Liszt transcendental  study on piano that knocked your socks off. There was also a flutist and another pianist who were good, but not as good as Martin Varosvari, the wunderkind. 

We had a delicious lunch at a restaurant overlooking Budapest behind the church.  Best thing I've had here was at that restaurant, it was a fresh pea soup with a feta foam.

The rest of the meal was some cubed pork with potatoes and garlic which was delicious, but too much and a floating island for dessert. We have yet to actually have a dinner here, because they feed us so much during the day that we just walk around like a little stuffed piggies.

After lunch a few of us went to the Gellert spa, which is on the Buddhist side of the river. We had planned to go to a different spot yesterday but the day got too long and there wasn't enough time. We had to take two buses, and although it turned out to be very easy,  it was a little challenging.  First we walked into the hotel, which is decorated in Art Nouveau style and has some gorgeous windows that appeared to be Tiffany though I am sure they are more local than that.  Then we went around to the spa side. When you walk into the spot you are in a great Hall with a glass ceiling that is quite beautiful.We rented cabins, which are places where you can change your clothes and lock up your stuff,and then we went and sat in the thermal baths. We got a bit separated, and three of them went one place and I went another but we eventually found each other. Other than the minor stress of getting there. It was very relaxing.

Then for our evening event,we had a performance by the Hungarian folk dancers.  They were accompanied by a quartet that had two wonderful violinists.  This being about the first warm place I have been all day, of course I fell asleep. Which had you been there you would realize how difficult a challenge that was. It was very loud.  However since I had been awake since about 2:30 in the morning and couldn't go back to sleep, of course I was sleepy.  

I think Budapest is a gorgeous city, because we are staying on the flat side, Pest, and all the beautiful bridges are lit up at night as are all the wonderful buildings  on the Buda side, which just forms a lovely backdrop.

TRAVEL DAY TO BUDAPEST

Budapest 

I must say, this has been an interesting day.  Yesterday,  Saturday, September 5, we we left Sacramento to go to San Francisco to stay overnight for our 2 pm flight Sunday for Frankfurt with connections to Budapest.  

All went well until about 40 minutes into the flight when one of the engines quit.this is a big plane with four engines, so it wasn't particularly scary, but it took quite a long time to dump all the fuel and kill all the fish before we could land back at SFO.

 Believe it or not, they actually were able to put us on another plane and 5 hours after our original departure, we were in the air again.  

Then about the time we'd been in the air for bout two hours, they asked if there was a doctor on board.  I was  picturing a landing somewhere in Canada, but that must have been resolved.  

As I write this, it is 4:30 am at home, 1:30 at our destination,, we have missed our connecting flight to Budapest and may or may not have been rebooked.  And we are still an hour and a half from Frankfurt.  I slept about 3-1/2 hours, though.

Our passage through Frankfurt airport was hilarious. The classic wait and hurry up.  

Zoe gets a wheelchair. The airport because she doesn't have the strength or speed to manipulate a big airport in a short amount of time.  

So, we get off the plane where we are supposed to meet by a United agent telling us when our shiny new connections will be departing -- all this stuff the busy worker bees were allegedly reconstructing while we were on the plane.  

Except because zoe gets a wheelchair, we were herded into a corralled area for the wheelchair passengers and the agent tells us that our new flight is in an hour and we will have plenty of time.  Maybe something about "plenty" suffers in translation.  We waited.  And waited.  Then I became concerned that while they might have taken care of her, they had never asked for my name, and we did t book our reservations together, so they might not have us traveling together and maybe I would arrive at the gate with no boarding pass.  

I walked across the terminal and found most of my fellow passengers who had allegedly been helped by United waiting in a looooong line to get boarding passes -- which you need to go through immigration.  Now I can see that I am not going to get through this line in anything under an hour, and I know already that our plane is at gate A 52 and we are at a gate that starts with a Z!  

About this time, a wheelchair driver shows up and starts us to immigration, where we get pretty much waved through, and then on what I can only describe as an attempt at an 8-minute mile.  

I'm still wearing a blanket from the plane because it's cold and because it's about 4 a.m. to me, which is the time of day when I am the coldest, though not today, because we are on a very long sprint.  I am gasping for air trying to keep up with her, and she is doing a very fast walk with a few running steps every so often.  Were it not for the moving sidewalks, I would have died for lack of breath, really, by the time we got there.  We were the last two people on the plane, and even so, zoe got an aisle seat.  

Dumping fuel over the ocean