We’ve had an absolutely amazing trip to Dresden and Prague from Berlin. Ariane accompanied us to the train station early on Friday morning (after getting up even earlier to make us lunches for our journey!) to make sure we got on our train ok. We had a nice quiet ride to Dresden, where we spent the afternoon walking around the city. We were able to drop our backpacks in a locker at the Zinger Palace, and gave ourselves a tour of the grounds and courtyard. Wow!! Really an incredible place to see. We continued our self-guided tour to the Frauenkirche, an absolutely beautiful church that they say “has literally risen from the city’s ashes,” as this landmark only was recently rebuilt. Lonely Planet Review said it well, “A spitting image of the original, it may not bear the gravitas of age but that only slightly detracts from its festive beauty inside and out.”
We got some bratwurst and glühwein, and headed back to the train headed for Prague. We shared a 6 person train compartment with some vacationing Polish-Americans around our age, and enjoyed a few laughs together. The view from the train of the German/Czech countryside was incredible. After arriving in Prague we only made one circle before heading in the proper direction for hotel. When we got up to our room, we immediately thought there may be a mistake. We opened the door, took a few gulps, and dropped our bags in amazement. It was the most beautiful hotel room we’d ever seen, with the biggest bed, and more chairs and seating space than a family of 8 needed. We freshened up, and went down to the front desk to ask about some good places to eat dinner, where to exchange money, and while we were at the questions, Jake asked if his mom had upgraded the room since he knew that he had not originally selected such a lavish room. [As a Christmas gift, Chris (Jake’s mom) generously paid for our hotel room in Prague.] But the hotel clerk said, “No she didn’t, we did.” They said, no one had taken that room for the next two nights, so they upgraded us. They also told us that it was the biggest and nicest room in the entire hotel! We felt like King and Queen of Boutique Hotel 7 Days in Prague.
We went out to dinner at a nice restaurant and quickly realized that our money seemed to go a lot farther in the Czech Republic, which was also a nice perk. The next day, we had a fabulous breakfast in the hotel, and then we met up with Jan, an acquaintance of Jake’s from school, who lives in Prague. How convenient! Jan saw Jake’s FB post about going to Prague and offered to show us around. It was very special for us to have Jan, a local, taking us to the important sights, telling us about the history and culture, as well as having the human connection of discussing shared experiences at Berklee. He took us to one of his favorite restaurants for lunch, and pointed us to things we should see the next day that we didn’t have time for. He spent the entire afternoon with us, and then got us back to the hotel just in time for Jake and I to get ready for our romantic evening together!
We had a romantic dinner for 2 (an additional surprise Christmas gift from Chris and Rich!) planned in the hotel restaurant at 5:30pm and then tickets to the opera at 7pm. The hotel was absolutely amazing to us. They day before, after we returned from dinner our first night there, the front desk clerked stopped us, letting us know that we had a romantic dinner scheduled. She said we just needed to let them know what time we’d like to do it the following evening. So we said, we’d like to do it before the opera and have an early dinner. Suddenly, the front desk clerk realized that we had a problem. The dinner lounge didn’t open until 6:30, and we had to leave for the opera at 6:30. So we asked what time it closed… maybe we could do a late dinner afterward? It closed at 11pm. So she told us, that they would have it ready when we got back. We went back up to our room, and looked up how long the opera was… and apparently it typically runs around 3.5 hours. Uh oh… that means that it would not get out until 10:30, and we wouldn’t be back at the hotel until 11pm… right when the dinner lounge was closing. So Jake went down again to inform the front desk, and see if we could switch it to a lunch instead. But the lady said, “No, it’s all planned, we can’t have that.” So she ended up calling the chef to inform him of the dilemma, and asked him if he could come in a little early around 6pm, which he was fine with. So Jake came back up and informed me that we would have a quick dinner before the opera. A minute later, we got a call in our room from the front desk and apparently the chef had asked more questions, and when hearing that we had to be at the opera at 7pm, he said, “No, they will be too rushed. Tell them to come at 5:30pm instead.” So the hotel opened the dinner lounge an hour early, plus they brought in the chef and a waitress early just for us. We had the entire place to ourselves, a personal waitress, and a delicious gourmet meal. We couldn’t finish our wine and dessert in time, so they brought it up to our room after our return from the opera. Remember, I said we felt like King and Queen of the hotel because our fancy room? This experience certainly topped off that feeling!!
After dinner, we scooted out to the opera. Earlier that day we read through the plot summary and scene descriptions of Don Giovanni so we would be prepared to follow the story, and it really helped to enjoy it even more. The opera house was beautiful, and we got a kick out of imagining Mozart right in front of us conducting as if we were attending the debuting show over 200 years ago. The performance was great. There was a special notice in the halls apologizing for the vocal quality one of the women performers who was apparently sick. Of course, we didn’t see this until the intermission and had to ask each other which performer was the sick one because they all sounded fantastic. Only at the curtain call could I really tell that this one girl was not doing so well. The show was great. It was fun too, because one of the songs in this show, “Batti Batti”, I sang in high school, and recently sang it a few times in our apartment in Spain for practice. I’ve never sang it in front of Jake, but he had obviously heard me through the walls, because he looked at me right when he heard the song begin. It made me feel good that he recognized it. I’ve watched several clips of this song on YouTube, so it was fun to see a live performance and the differences in direction. It’s a fun one!
The entire day in Prague was soooooo wonderful, we had to keep pinching ourselves. It truly felt like we were on our honeymoon or something. Just so special. The next day we checked out at 11am, and luckily we were able to store our bags at the hotel so we didn’t have to carry them around for the next 5 hours until our train left. This was just the right amount of time for us to go out again, see some sights that we didn’t have time for with Jan, do a little souvenir shopping, and navigate the the crowds of tourists. I was so surprised by the number of tourists. Hoards and hoards of tourists. It was incredible. More people than at Disneyland on a perfect summers day. It was like we were at the Superbowl or something...but that many people all throughout the city! But it was kind of cool, because since everyone was a tourist I didn’t feel stupid gawking at all the old buildings and beautiful skylines. We had fun weaving our way through crowds as we made our way through the Old Town Square, crossing the Charles bridge and up the hill to the Prague Castle. I particularly wanted to return to the area near the castle because Jan had mentioned that the movie Amadeus had been filmed in this part of the town. I thought that was really cool, and we were amazed by how few changes and touch ups they probably had to make to set the scene properly for the movie. Prague looks like one of the places I see in paintings--a time warp back to the 18th century with quaint cobblestone streets, well restored houses and shops freshly painted in classic colors; and seen in the distance are spires and towers of the many centuries old churches and monuments refurbished or kept through the ages. Truly amazing. We now have a treasure of pictures and memories from this utterly perfect trip thanks to David, Ariane, and Rachelle for the thoughtful train tickets and encouragement to experience as much of Europe as we can while we’re here. And thanks to Jake’s parents for the amazing hotel and romantic dinner. And his siblings for the thoughtful gift of tickets to Don Giovanni. All in all… a priceless experience.
(Jake has an album of pictures of this trip posted on his FB page. You can check it out if you're interested.)
Awesome!
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