Our 2012 Swan Song….. Prague to Washington, DC

Yes, another fabulous year of adventures and scavenges is sadly over.  It is with great depression that I report on our final few days.

Last day of the Europe leg was spent in Prague in the Czech Republic (another first time country for me).  Prague is built on a river and has an astounding variety of architecture:  from Baroque to Gothic to Cubist to Art Nouveau.  Our list of scavenges for Prague included gathering two different photo montages of examples of 10 different architectural genres as well as ornamentation on buildings and statues. So we spent most of the day with our heads turned up assessing the variety of building styles and looking for gargoyles and statues of saints or gods.  

Favorite Prague scavenges included:

(a) Eat a special type of Czech schnitzel: a smazeny syr. Schitnzel is a battered and fried food, not dissimilar to a chicken fried steak and can be made with chicken, veal etc.  What a surprise when I cut this one open to find: a fried slab of cheese… like a giant Cheese Stick but with no marinara sauce for dipping. It's a heart attack steak.  

(b) We had to find the city clock which has been keeping official time for the city since 1410….It’s an astronomical clock and very beautiful. 

(c) We crossed the Charles Bridge which is lined with statues and shrines. My favorite is the “Love Locks Shrine” where couples attach padlocks to an ornate shrine to essentially “lock-in” their love.  There are so many padlocks that the city had to cut them off each week or there would be no more space. 

(d) We visited the John Lennon wall - an oddity on a tree-line side-street:

When John Lennon was murdered in 1980, graffiti about his music and his life started appearing on this particular wall in Prague.  It was a thinly veiled protest against the Communist regime that still ruled Czechoslovakia: a regime that did not allow music from suspicious singers such as Lennon because his songs promoted peace and freedom. The wall is a constantly changing art piece as new graffiti is put on top of old on a regular basis. 

There is a mini Eiffel tower on a hillside in Prague (approximately 1/5^th the size of the real one). From the top there is a great view of Prague. Naturally we had to hoof it all the way to the top...  legs burning again.

We had to sing Cezch drinking songs in an authentic beer hall.  Since I have to eat the nasty food all over the world, Rainey gets to do the embarrassing perform-in-front-of-total-strangers-and-make-a-fool-out-of-yourself stuff...

And my favorite piece of architecture in Prague... the Dancing Building – a condo complex designed to visually depict the movement and fluidity of dance. Isn't it great?

Observations: Apparently if you are a totally healthy and able-bodied 19 year old, you find it appropriate in Prague to kneel down beside a dog and beg for money.  I wanted to give this kid a flea dip and send him to a labor pool. Get a job, buddy!!!

WASHINGTON, DC:  Our last leg was back to the US for a day in Washington, DC. We only had a few hours for scavenges so we rented bicycles to get as much done as possible. 

And we hit all of the expected sites: Washington Memorial

The Capitol  - with all of its glory

The brand new Martin Luther King memorial - which I liked a lot - except why couldn't they do the statue from an earlier and slimmer time in his life? It's like they picked the most unflattering depiction of him to carved into white marble for all of time. 

And then we found the names of potential ancestors at the Vietnam Memorial Wall.

David and Natasha at lunch...

THE END: And so ends our amazing trip.  We just finished the Awards Ceremony and the Farewell Party.  This year, Rainey and I came in third. "The Sidney Sisters" were in second place (a sister team from Australia - far right) and Andrew & Sasskia took first place (the couple in the middle from New Zealand).  Here’s the winner’s circle…..  

Home tomorrow and back to the real world.  I’m dreading it already.