Learning our way around Prague

The past two days we have become more familiar wirh the area here. We are staying in a family run residence on a street on the tram line. Our rooms are in a huge re-furbished house but each room has outside entry. Our room is above a coffee house so we can get fresh coffee as we board our tram for the 10-20 min ride to various parts of town. More shopping and gawking at historical landmarks. Now, I promised to share our blacklight theater experience. This is a form of theater that is unique to prague and originated in the 1960's. It mixes mime, dance, music, and florescent effects with no words- so there is no language barrier. There is no set, but the stagehands wear all black and the props and scenery glow and look as if they are floating. Alex and I saw one with Beatles music based on the 60's. It was strange, random, and interesting. Colorful, glowing butterflies seemed to fly through the air on stage when in reality the stage hands all dressed in black were moving them. The theater was very small and we were two of the 20 audience members in a room that could hold about 40. It was a cultural experience. Other cultural experiences noted today:as we were throwing away our food a young boy grabbed the plate so he could finish the last few bites. An older man looked eagerly as he accepted the chips I offered him rather than throw them away. We throw food away everyday without thinking about it. Today for the first time here I noticed the people hanging around the food stands waiting for tourists like us to throw away "their next meal". This evening we took two elevators and some stairs up the clock tower for great views if the city. This is the astronomical clock that has characters every hour and a real person plays a trumpet from the tower. We spent time around sunset in the tower and it was breathtaking. Then, as darkness fell, we walked through the streets to the river and the Charles Bridge. The photo on this blog page is the Charles Bridge looki g toward the Powder Gate. They used to store gun powder for the castle here. The cathedrals, castle, and towers were all lit as well as the boats on the river below. Fireworks were going off in the distance. A short walk (our mantra is "everything is a short ten minute walk" as our guide books always say) to the trams and we are in for the night. All the walking is starting to take its toll on us, some more than others. We wonder what Mom is really writing in her travel journal each night and in her tell-all book who gets the blame for all the short ten minute walks she has been dragged on...)