Wedding photos

There is always the tough question, where should you take your wedding photos, the church or in the garden?  How about Prague?  Every morning I go on my walk, I see multiple photo shoots of brides and grooms.  Always wonderfully dressed and with a complete crew doing the shoot.  When I asked out guide about it, apparently the vast majority are from South Korea where it is a new status symbol.    Couples are usually already married and come to Prague primarily for the photo shoot.  There is a very popular television drama called "Lovers in Prague" that is a young couple living in Prague and has generated the intense interest.  Pop culture is an interesting thing.

Getting ready to fly home

I fly out in the morning with mixed feelings.  It was a great time and I enjoyed spending time with Brittani and Kyle, but would have loved if Anne could have come.  Maybe next time with Bev and John (hint, hint).  I will admit up front, most of the photos below are re-runs on the blog, but when I post them, I normally do just a quick crop and and auto-adjust.  In this case, I took my favorite shots and spent some time to clean them up.  These are the highlights from the trip and I am pretty happy, they are keepers.

Mid-morning walk

I powered through being sad about losing my travel buddy's and decided to go on a long walk after Brittani and Kyle left.  I was not sure I had a long walk in me when I left, but I walked for 3 hours and did about 10 miles into a new part of the city I had not been.  Very nice, much of it was along the river.  For those who watched the original Mission Impossible movie, they claim to be in Trieste, but it was shot in Prague and the area I walked I could remember much of it in the movie.

Wenceslas Square

Goodby to Brittani and Kyle :(

Brittani and Kyle headed off for Cesky Krumlov on the train early this morning.  I saw them off in a cab heading to the train station.  I really enjoyed my time with them, what a treat.  It is hard to get time with your grown children once you live in separate cities, but where better to do it than Prague during a week of 70 degrees and sunny weather.  This is my favorite shot of them, I posted earlier with just a quick cropping, but had time to brighten up the colors.

Do you want a Budweiser or a Budweiser?

One thing I forgot to mention during the beer tour post was what we learned about Budweiser.  Most people in the US know the story of Adolphus Busch who makes his way to St. Louis and made the beer he knew from Europe.  What I did not know was that Budweiser has been made in the Czech Republic since the 1250's, but was never trademarked.  Now this may be the Czech side of the story, but our guide said that the name was not trademarked, so Busch came back to Europe, trained on how to make Budweiser and made it in the US with the same recipe, name and logo.  Apparently it took years for the europeans to find out and has led to the longest lasting trademark dispute in history, still unresolved but being fought in 140 countries.  The upshot of this is I finally understand why you usually hear US Budweiser followed by Anheuser-Busch and in Europe it is called Budweiser Budvar.  Probably more than you needed to know, but time for me to do more research on Budvar.

Walking tour - day 2

We had the second day of our tour, today we focused on the castle side of the river.  Lots of great sites and it was a good morning.  Here are some shots from the day.  Nice churches, gardens and a few quirky places at the end.

Lennon dedication wall, not sure why it they have it in Prague, but a big draw of people

I originally was taking a picture of the figure on the left and then notices 

the cure patio sticking out over the river.  Very nice.

Another morning walk

This time, Brittani and Kyle were along for the trip.  Great morning, a little cool, but very sunny.  Great for walking and photos.  Sorry many of the sites are the same, but better morning light for photos.  We are off the the second day of our tours this morning.

Beer Tour

We booked a beer tour this afternoon that took us to 3 different breweries in a new part of town.  It was nice.  The first place had a sampler of 8 different beers, the next two places only served he beer they made on-site.  We learned a lot about beer and Czech culture.  It was a good afternoon.  A few shots are below.

Interesting sculpture on the tour.  Large sculpture of a face that would rotate from a 

recognizable face to an unrecognizable globe.  Interesting.

Beer sampler from the first brewery  Eight different small beers to try.  As you can 

see form the colors they were very different.

Favorite Czech bar food, cheese curd with cheese and herbs inside, served with peppers.  It came with bread and was very good with the beer.

Half day walking tour - Part 1

We have two half day walking tours to see Prague.  The first day was today and we toured old town, new town and the Jewish quarter.  It was just the 3 of us and a guide, which was great (other than the 20 minutes at the Jewish cemetery where a woman tried to join our group and kept bumping Brittani and Kyle out).  Go figure.

Here are some shots of the day.  We have a couple hour break and then a tour of breweries late this afternoon.

Famous astronomical clock right across from our hotel.  You cannot see it in this resolution

 but the lower circle had every day of the year on it.  From the 1500's

Church off of old town square

Famous cubist architecture building

Interesting statue of man riding and upside-down bull, hanging in the air

City Market

Paintings of children in the Jewish quarter that ended up in concentration camps, very sad

Jewish cemetery, over 100,000 people buried over hundreds of year.  We were told their

 were 11 layers and they just kept moving up the grave stoves.  The walls around the 

cemetery are about 15 ft high to hold it in.

Morning photo shoot

I was up fairly early so went out on a photo shoot when the light was good and many less people.  Ironically, there were a fair amount of other photographers and lots of wedding parties also wanting the good light.  Some great shots.  It was fascinating to see all the photographers jockey for position, all trying to get the same shot and stay out of each others way.  Few spoke the same language, so it was a complicated non-verbal dance, very interesting.

When Brittani, Kyle and I walked across this bridge yesterday afternoon, it 

was shoulder to shoulder and you could hardly move.  Big difference.

In another photo, this groom was rubbing his brides arms in the cool

 morning, trying to keep her warm.  Smart man....

Nice shot of the castle with a local fisherman heading out

An ice-cream stand that Kyle has been eyeing.  They make a cone from dough like a churro

 and it rotates in front of a heater to cook.  They are everywhere and use it as an cone.