Prague - Old Town, Jewish Quarter and Castle District

Hard to get up this morning...long days of walking on uneven cobble stones have taken their toll on legs and feet and it's been warmer that expected so it's easy to get dehydrated. 

We met our guides at 8:45 AM in the lobby - got our trusty Audio boxes with ear phone which have made all of our walking tours so pleasant.  The guides are incredibly knowledgeable and tell engaging tales and bits of history without notes and ongoing manner.  We started at the hotel, walked to the main Old Town square with constant narrative as we went...saw Franz Kafka's birthplace, a building where Albert Einstein held a meeting, and heard about every past leader in Czech history.  The buildings are an amazing amalgum of Gothic, Renaissance, Baroch, and other architectual varieties.  We then visited the Jewish Quarter - a moving and exhausting experience.  We visited 5 different Synagogues (only one of which has a current congregation), heard about the history of Jews in Czech Republic and its earlier iterations, and were overwhelmed with the amount of relics and other items of Judaism that were saved and displayed in the Jewish Museum.  The buildings, all restored, were beautiful and heartbreaking.  About 100,000 buried in the Jewish Cemetary in shrouds and often in layers since they ran out of space.  One Synagogue had 40,000 names engraved on its wall - took many years to complete by hand alphabetically and by names of cities and villages throughout the country.  I could go on and on, but will save the details until we see many of my readers face to face.  Pictures of Old Town Center and Jewish Quarter

We returned to the hotel with free time between 12 and 2 and then boarded mini-buses to go to the Castle District where we toured the Cathedral and had a special appointment to visit inside of the Monestery Library (usually tourists can only view the rooms from the doorways).  In all of the rooms of the library combined there are more than a million books, categorized by subject and in the most beautiful rooms.  We must have walked about 5 miles this afternoon alone and loved every minute of it.  I don't know how I will ever organize my pictures...I've lost count of the number :)  Pictures of the Castle District (Cathedral and Monestary Library

Relaxed with heavy appetizers, wine and dessert in the hotel lounge while visiting with a couple from NJ.  As we talked, we discovered that he, Dr. Patel practiced at Muhlenberg Hospital in Plainfield, NJ when my friend, Pat Johnson, was the Director of Nursing!  And she was originally from Roumania and her last name was Fulop (the same of my father's name) - we decided that we may be related!!  What a small world this really is.

Tomorrow a group of us have booked a private trip to the site of the Teresin Concentration camp.  Hope to have an informative post tomorrow....very scary to be going there, especially because of the number of child who died in their Children's Haus.