a quick mash up

Hello all my lovely people,
I know it seemed that I fell off the face of the earth again, fortunately that is not the case. The last couple of weeks have been a whorl wind of activity that have been full of early mornings, late nights, and a lot of fun.
First: our last full day in Prague was spent wandering up, and then back down, Petrin Hill. It is mostly surrounded by a tall stone wall (I have yet to figure out if it is a castle, city, or garden wall). It is full of manicured gardens, amazing views, an observatory, and a community orchard (we enjoyed a few apples on the way down).

This is my most favorite place in Prague, because it was breathtaking and adventurous and peaceful all at the same time.

After the hill we admired the astronomical clock. It is old (over 600 years), it is beautiful, and it is cool. I learned it is the oldest working astronomical clock in the world. 

Isn't it amazing!?!?!
Next, the six of us rented a car and drove from Prague to Krakow where we joined on the last three days of wedding activities, one of which was a walking tour of Krakow.
We started at the old town square northern wall, (c.1200s):

After wandering around the town square for a couple hours we had lunch in a traditional Polish milk bar, called that because they focus more on dairy than on meat:

We then spent some time exploring Wawel castle where we admired the royal court yard and gardens before entering a secret passage that went down a long spiral stair case, through one of the 22 caverns under the castle, and exiting out side the castle wall (I still get goose bumps thinking about the generations of knights and messengers that ran up and down those stairs).

The next couple of days were full swing wedding activities: rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, wedding prep, wedding, and reception. I am afraid I do not have to many pictures of these events but I will say this: if you ever get a chance to go to a Polish wedding, do it! Polish people know how to party ;D. And the wedding its self was beautiful. It was held in a small country castle that still had remnants of a mote (be still my beating heart):

Unfortunately we had to leave the reception early (the first bus back to the hotel was at 12:30) because we needed to drive back to Krakow for our 12 hour flight back home. Well state side for me and kiddos as we stopped off in the mid-west to hang out with my family, but more on that next time.

Thanks for checking in,
XO Lue Lue Ellabee

Spiders, castles, and bones oh my!

Good morning all,
These last couple of days here in Prague have been full of adventure, history, and learning. Non of us speak even a little Czech, and the English to Czech phrase book is no help because we never seem to pronounce the words correctly. Fortunately, we have managed to get along okay with pointing, nodding, and smiling. And every once and a while we will meet someone who is interested in (or at least okay with) practicing their english on us.
Anyway, here are a few of the things we have been up to:
Saturday afternoon we landed in Prague and made it to our apartment where we met up with my love's sister and her love. We are sharing an amazing 3 bedroom in old town Prague. This is the view from the loft area above the dining room:

There is one problem, it seems to be rampant through out the city. That is spiders, they are every where, and they are big.  This is just two of the 7 (that I have seen so far) that have webs directly outside our bedroom windows.

You can't leave your windows open for any length of time because they come in, especially at night. Saturday night, just as I was drifting off to sleep, I opened my eyes to see the silhouette of one of these suckers slowly dropping towards the lower half of my love as he slept. I soon realized I could not take care of the spider with out waking my love, which I did with a "Get up, a spider is about to land on you!". We both jumped up, turned on the lights, and searched until we found the offending spider and squished it. I am all for the 'live and let live' out in the wild, but they come into my house they are getting smooshed. I awoke in the morning to find these in the loft windows:

I was kind of hoping to stick my head out and admire the view. Oh, well, onto better things.
Sunday we took a walk across the Charles Bridge on our way to Prague Castle. The views were amazing.

You can even go up inside one of the watch towers. This is a picture of Prague Castle from the top of the tower.

We wondered up the hill to the castle and watched a bit of what we originally thought was the changing of the guard. Once the ceremony hit the 15 minute mark we decided it must be something else because, that elaborate ceremony every day at noon seems a bit ridiculous. Instead of staying for that whole thing we made our way to St. Vitus Cathedral, which is inside the castle.

 
The castle its self is a sprawling compound made of gardens, houses, and a few palaces. We learned that the Czech government still operates from there. I am sorry I did not get more pictures of the different buildings and the castle wall. But I do have a pretty nice picture from the old town square, back across the Charles bridge and near the astronomical clock (I am planing on going back to that today) :

Yesterday we to the hour long train ride to the town of Kunta Hora to see the Sedlec Ossuary (aka bone church).

 There are the remains of up to 70,000 people here, most of them centuries old and stacked in pyramids inside the ossuary. In 1870 a Mr. Rint was hired to organize the bones and he decided to get creative which is why the ossuary has become so popular:

 

I can't say I am a fan. I went because it seemed all historical and interesting but, I left feeling like a terrible person. I kept thinking about all these poor people who's lives had been forgotten and are now seen as nothing more than part of a morbid tourist attraction. I say rebury the lot and let them be.

Well I am going to end it there.
Thanks for checking in,
XO Lue Lue Ellabee

leaving Spain

(written Sunday 12:00pm, spell checked Monday 6:00am)
Hello all,

I know that it has been a while. My only excuse is the lack of available Internet this past week. Right now I am in the Barcelona airport, waiting for our flight to Prague. So, I will try to do a quick re-cap of the week.
Ordesa National park is absolutely worth seeing:

We sapient 3 days hiking in and around the park on the GR11 trail, one of several hiking trails that go between Spain and France.

After Ordesa we went to one of Spain's Paradors, state run hotels that are usually historic land marks, but some are just hotels built in incredibly scenic places . We stayed at Parador Bielsa. When we got there we did a little hike to a waterfall and then I did a some more hiking on my own searching for an old hermitage and ended up here:

This is part of a huge valley at the top of a mountain--well, maybe not the top, but certainly quite a ways up it. The "farm house" looked abandoned and there were no more signs to tell me if it was the hermitage I was looking for, but the scenery was breath taking.

We left the Parador early Tuesday morning and thought it would be fun to drive through France on our way to the coast. The small towns are beautiful, but we could not stay on back roads the whole way. From the highway, France looks suspiciously like Missouri. We stopped for a quick lunch and gas at a large truck stop and the little one thought it would be fun to play hide and seek. Unfortunately, he didn't let any of us know and we spent a frantic 20 min looking for him. He was discovered by a very kind cashier who (despite the language barrier) did his best to understand why I was so distressed, then found someone to cover for him while he helped us look. The security guard was less kind as he lectured me about learning a country's language before visiting that country (I will choose to believe that he felt like a tool when he realized I was about to burst into tears because I couldn't find my baby in a foreign country where I didn't speak the language).

When we finally got back on the road again I was not in the mood to try to visit any of the tourist attractions that we passed on the way back to Spain (and we passed a pretty awesome castle which I really regret not stopping at).

For the last four days we have been staying at this pretty crazy hotel turned condos on the coast near Begur Spain. We had an amazing view from the apartment:

The building, itself had some interesting features like this piece of the mountain sticking out:

We walked all around trying to figure out how it worked and I think they put it there rather than built around it. There were lots of long dark hall ways and slightly absurd features that made our stay just a little more interesting. When we weren't at the beach swimming, we were exploring the building.

Well, that is all I have time to share with you for now.
Maybe more tomorrow
XO Lue Lue Ellabee


P.S. I almost forgot to tell you, I finished the shawl! I will show you pictures once I have the pattern written up (although I have no way to block it until I get home). But I have decided to name it Torla, after a beautiful stone village near the Ordessa National Park (it is also where I cast off).