Exploring Prague

Last week was the Fall holiday, which means it's a perfect time to take a quick trip. Prague had been on our list of places to see for quite a while, so we went! We spent a very nice few days tromping through the alleys and hills. It's really a beautiful city.

 

Here's the view from the hill of the famous Prague Castle. More cities should put their awesome cathedrals and castles right on a hilltop, since you get to see them from just about anywhere in the city.

Case in point- the view up to the cathedral from the river.

And here it is again peaking over the Wallenstein Pallace (home of the Czech senate).

And here it is from the base.

The river is a major element of the city center, dividing the "Old Town" on the east from the "Still looks really old to me Town" on the west.

Morning light on the water.

The most famous bridge over the river is the Charles Bridge:

 

The old parts of town are kind of a warren of small alleys and streets. It's awesome for exploring, but also easy to get lost in. Here's C doing some exploring:

Beautiful old buildings are everywhere. To wit:

and:

As were old steps. That's good news for C, since going up and down steps is currently the Best Thing Ever.

Also, for a big, old, city, there were a ton of trees around. That was great, since we were there in the Fall.

And finally, one last view overlooking the city from Petrin Park, a very hilly forest area (with some great playgrounds for C!).

Festuge

Every August we have Festuge here in Aarhus.  It's a week of festive activities in the city--concerts and beer, mostly, with occasional sausages, circuses, and free face-painting or yoga.  I think it's meant to attract tourists and make the locals not so sad about the end of summer.  (You'll see from the pictures that Festuge pretty much always heralds the end of summer sunshine).

Anyway, it's enough of an event that we take pictures, but not enough of an event that we have ever blogged about it before.  But.  But but but.  The very best thing about Festuge has always been a little something called "Hop med Os!" (Hop with Us!)-- a small park filled to the brim with bouncy castles and overexcited children.  B and I like it so much that we always go watch the little kids there and plotted and planned when C would be big enough to go. 

This year she was!  Obviously we took more pictures of C hopping than of four previous years of Festuge all together, but that's OK since it got us to blog about this unique aspect of Danish culture and our life abroad.

Happy (extremely belated) Festuge!  God fornøjelse!

In 2012 and 2013 the city made a giant park in the middle of town.

As you can see, the park is right in front of ARoS museum, so the rainbow affords an excellent view of the festivities.

A view of the "water labyrinth" from 2014.  It's green because we're in the rainbow.

Did I mention there was beer?

View from the rainbow in 2012.  Hop med Os is just alongside the Musikhuset.

Hoppers!

Me and my favorite hopper.

OK, make that my TWO favorite hoppers!

Also the boldest slider in town.

Hey!  Let's go hop some more!