Just a year ago, my husband Wes and I finally took our honeymoon trip to a city that is so very close to my heart: Prague.
My paternal grandfather was raised just outside Prague, and I’ve visited the city three times before, the last time being stranded there for days and days with my sister as 9/11 unfolded in the US. The Czechs are warm, friendly, inviting people, and coming back to Prague nearly two decades later… it felt like coming home, in a way. I still may get turned around at times, but it’s all so lovely and familiar… and breathtakingly beautiful.
Wes has not traveled much in the past, and never internationally, so getting to go somewhere so different, so beautiful, so ancient really blew his mind, and we both absolutely loved it.
Prague is known as the “City of a Thousand Spires”, and it’s not hard to see why, with all its beautiful churches and cathedrals, and even the “Bone Church” of nearby Kutna Hora…
It feels like we simultaneously did so much and saw so much, and still left so much unexplored, unseen. We’ve already resolved that we’ll be back… someday…
I got to mark a few things of the list, though, such as really seeing the magnificent Strahov Monastery libraries…
We took a luncheon boat ride on the Vlatva River… wandered the Jewish Quarter and the amazing Jewish Cemetery… saw the Infant Jesus of Prague… and even took a Czech cooking class!
Of course, we ambled back and forth across the Charles Bridge, going from Old Town to New Town, marveling at a structure that has been around since 1357…
One of my biggest goals for the trip was not to rushrushrush around like tourists the whole time… I really wanted us to just sit and absorb the world around us, relishing the gorgeous weather to sit in cafes, have a coffee or a beer, and watch the world go by, and we certainly accomplished that, visiting many a café and happily whiling away the hours in the best scenery possible…
And yet, that’s so very much we still want to see and do and experience in this most magical city, and with the state of the world as it is right now, who knows when we’ll travel (much less internationally) again, which fills me with such melancholy (since COVID, we’ve already had to cancel New Orleans and Italy, which breaks my heart). Wanderlust gives me life…
Just in case, we made sure to rub St. John of Nepomuk’s statue on the Charles Bridge, which means you’ll return some day…
–Marissa
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