It’s our last week here in Prague so we decided to take a few memorable side trips coupled with a little culture at the Prague National Museum…very little. The museum itself (pic below) was beautiful but also very, very empty. It has been under renovation for the past few years so most of the exhibits are currently closed. Points for trying?

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Our hike through the hills of Cesky Raj was awesome, full of limestone peaks, medieval castles and of course beer gardens.

A few hours of good hiking later we arrived into the tiny town of Hruba Skala to catch our train back to Prague which thankfully was on-time and uneventful. Caden meanwhile discovered that his new favorite thing to do is to keep his head half perched out the train window…yes, like a dog. On a positive side note this is however the one and only pic of Caden’s hair being “styled”.

Back in Prague we decided to take another swing at culturing ourselves with a trip to the opera! Obviously Tara is a bit more high-brow than the rest of us, but for Caden, Keira & I this was our first one. We went to see Don Giovanni at the Estates Theatre where Mozart first premiered this very same opera on October 29th of 1787. No worries, we mostly behaved.

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After our huge operatic success Tara decided to try her hand at developing her own unique perfume. There’s a place in the city called Perfumed Prague where you can create original fragrance combinations from over 100 different scents. The couple who own the studio spent two hours with us and were amazing…and also gave us some great last-minute recommendations of places to visit in Prague before we leave (don’t miss dinner & the Gin Basil Smash at Spejle). As for Tara’s creation (codename Alegria), I obviously can’t tell you the secret ingredients until our patent is granted.

Last Call…

Our final side-trip in Europe took us to the beautiful village of Cesky Krumlov on the Czech Republic’s southern border. Our Airbnb overlooked the river as it made its way around the city’s beautiful Old Town. In fact, if you look close enough you can see Tara’s head peeking out from the porch in the church picture below (yes, she’s reading either her 5th or 6th book of the trip).

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Cesky Krumlov was awesome! If you’re ever in the area be sure to go rafting down the Vltav, catch a riverfront dinner at Papa’s Living Restaurant (Turkey Wellington with blue-cheese creamed spinach and mustard cream sauce was amazing), and grab an after dinner drink at Apotheka.

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Oh yeah, they also have loads of sweets for the littles and breweries for the bigs!

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It’s hard to believe that the first third of our trip is already behind us, but the 2+ months that we’ve spent traveling across Europe have been exceptional. The sights, the sounds, the food, the football…all amazing!

With a little luck we’ll be back this way again sometime soon.

See you in Thailand!