Barcelona 2019

Hola! Nick and I just returned from our trip to Barcelona, and, boy, do I have a lot to unpack (figuratively).

October 11-12: We started planning this trip for the two of us back in June, when I found some super cheap airline tickets. We left our kids to my parents, and took off to Chicago midday on Friday. We had a red-eye direct to Barcelona, and although our 10:05 was delayed until 11 pm, we were finally on our way. We left the rainy, chilly Midwest good-bye. We arrived in Barcelona at about 2:15 pm local time on Saturday. We then waited TWO HOURS in line to go through the passport check (no joke, we got past it at 4:25 pm). Catching the bus into town was surprisingly quick and easy after that. We made out way into the glorious, sunny, mid-70s day. We got off at Plaça Espanya, walked 15 minutes to our Poble-Sec-area Airbnb apartment, and were let in. It was a great, 3rd floor apartment, with a kitchen, washing machine, and enough space for us to stretch out. We rested a bit before going to the restaurant near Paral-lel that I had booked two months ago, Bodega 1900. It was our first meal in Spain, and, damn, did we pick a good one. It was a highly rated place, and for good reason. We ordered glasses of house vermouth and chose the "surprise menu", where the attentive waitstaff would continue to bring us tapas plates on the menu until we cried Uncle. I didn't take pictures of everything we were served, but many are in the bottom third of the photo below. My favorite was the grilled fresh squid with onions caramelized in ink. Mmmm. After dinner, we headed back to the apartment and tried to find the Badger football game on TV. We ended up listening to it on the radio until we gave in to exhaustion at midnight.

So much good food!

October 13: Sundays are generally pretty quiet around Barcelona, so I had signed us up for a free Runner Bean walking tour of the Gothic Quarter. We slept in past 8, then walked down to Plaça Reial to be early for our 11 am tour. We got put in a group with Jessie, an Australian woman living in Barcelona for several years. Our group of 22 weaved in and out of the narrow streets as she gave us details as to the history of Barcelona and certain sights at which we stopped. It was a great introduction to the city and area. Afterward, we headed to a restaurant she recommended, and while the food was good, the service was disappointingly slow. We did a bit more walking around the Born area, then headed back to our apartment via the waterfront. We relaxed a bit and said hi to the kids, then decided to give our legs a workout by walking up nearby Montjuïc. It was a little cloudy and we got a bit off-path, but we made it to the castle/fortification and had a look around. We had a nice view of the port and the city below. The sun set while we were coming back down, and it got dark quickly. We walked under the orangy lights to Carrer de Blai, where we found a restaurant and had our first taste of pinxos (basically, an hors d'oeurve on a slice of French bread with a large toothpick securing them together). We ate until full, then headed back to the apartment for the night.

Gothic Quarter tour sights, waterfront, Montjuic

October 14: This morning, we got ready and took our first Metro ride to get ourselves to La Sagrada Familía basilica for our 10 am entry time. It was another gorgeous mid-70s day. We spent a couple of hours taking in all the wondrous details of Gaudí and other artists. I really can't explain it all in detail. Suffice it to say that it's definitely a must-see in Barcelona.

Sagrada Famila basilica

After our time there, we decided to get away from the crowds for a bit. We took a walk along Carrer d'Aragó, stopping for a quick sandwich and tiny coffee. We noticed the traffic around us was getting jammed, and realized why when we crossed a police barrier. The streets around Passeig de Gràcia were all blocked to traffic, so it was very strange to walk along a multilane road with only pedestrians in the streets. We were looking at the houses on the Block of Discord (like Casa Batlló) when we realized that there was a demonstration/protest in the works and we were part of it. Backstory: Two years ago, the Catalunya region held a vote for independence. That was considered illegal under Spanish law, and the leaders were arrested. Today, they announced the sentences for the jailed politicians (9-13 years). Many locals were NOT happy about this, and took to the streets. They converged on Plaça Catalunya as we watched from the sidelines. It seems peaceful, and there were no police officers in the mix, so I didn't get a strong tension vibe. While we watched, many started pouring into the Metro to go to the airport to protest there. We decided that was the time to leave, so we walked away from it, and stopped at a German bar for a couple of beers. The crowd dispersed and we continued our walk back to our apartment. On the way, we stopped at Mercat de Sant Antoni, where we bought some bread, ham and cheese to make our dinner, and I found a necklace with a pendant shaped like the paving blocks that are all over the city. It was mid-afternoon, and we were hungry, so after dropping things off at our apartment, we went to a ramen restaurant nearby for a change of pace. That hit the spot. We got gelato for dessert on our walk back to Carrer de Margarit. It started to rain, so we decided to stay in for the evening. We had our Netflix account hooked up to the TV, and ate our dinner late while watching episodes of BoJack Horseman. In the middle of the night, I was woken by a thunderstorm moving through.

Protests! Buildings!

October 15: The rain overnight washed the city clean and revealed a marvelously clear day, again in the mid-70s. We had some time to kill in the morning, so after we got ready, we walked through El Raval to La Rambla. There, we visited the Mercat de la Boqueria. There was an amazing variety of food (and people) there. So interesting and so many selfie-sticks. We caught the Metro from Liceu to Lesseps, hiked our way up to Park Güell, and arrived within our appointed half hour. We spent the next two hours wandering all over the park, looking at the Gaudí tilework, and the incredibly clear views from the hill towards the sea. We've got super calves after that excursion. We were hungry for lunch after, so we found a little hole in the wall place that definitely didn't cater to tourists (no English anywhere), but where we got a delicious Iberico ham flatbread with arugula and beers. We walked back to Passeig de Gràcia, found we had just missed another protest, and walked to see the Arc de Triomf. I liked that there were sculpted bats on it. More walking, back through El Born and into the Gothic Quarter, where we stopped for a pint of Strongbow at an Irish pub. Walked through the very diverse El Raval area to our dinner spot for the night - L'Amfora, where we had seafood paella and a delicious bottle of local white wine. Decided to walk to the Magic Fountain, which, unfortunately, was not running. The MNAC was lit up instead. We walked back through the Poble-Sec neighborhood under the orange lights back to our apartment.

Park Guell and a bit of La Rambla

October 16: Today was our first day waking up with the sunrise - 7:45. We headed to Plaça Catalunya to be there before 9 am. We were booked on a Montserrat tour and wine tasting experience. We were put into a group of 13 with Agnes, and there were two tour groups headed on the same excursion. We all boarded the coach bus and headed out of the city north towards the mountains. The other guide, Pol, gave a detailed description of local history and the history of the Montserrat Monastery. It took about an hour to get up to the monastery, on some very windy roads. Our bus was among dozens of other buses there, so many, many people. Agnes gave us about a half hour tour of the different areas of interest around the monastery, the history of it and some interesting things that are done now (like there's a boy's choir, and the monks make liquor). We got an hour of free time, so we bought a variety pack of the liquors, then walked along a windy, steep path to a place where we could get a great view of the monastery, the valley below, and all the way to the sea. After our free time was over, we got back on the bus and headed toward a quaint, quiet winery. It was about 2:30, so Agnes skipped the tour and took us straight for the tapas and wine tasting. Nice flow of conversation about the wines and life in general among the variety of people on our tour (a few midwesterners like us, two Canadians, a Danish couple, two women from Australia...). After the tasting, we got the brief tour and an opportunity to try the winery's cava. We did that while talking to one of the Australian women about the size of the spiders they have there. That was a pretty unique experience overall. We headed back to Barcelona and started our walk back. We stopped at La Boqueria market for food, and left with a cone full of whole, breaded fried fishes (not sure if they were sardines or anchovies or something else), and fried baby squiddies. Yum. We walked back to our apartment and relaxed... until we learned that the general strike planned for Catalunya was going to impact our flight plans for Friday. @#$%. Nick got on the phone with the airline while I looked up alternatives. They offered us a flight home on Sunday. I found an overnight bus for Thursday night that would take us from Barcelona to Madrid, where we've be able to get our scheduled transatlantic flight. We went for my plan instead, and bought those tickets. That was a bit of a curveball... Apparently, the protests have been getting rowdy during the night, burning things and clashing with police. We didn't see any of that during the day on our walks, but read about it the next day.

Montserrat Monastery

Can Bonastre winery

October 17 - Our last full(ish) day in Barcelona. We had pretty much done all of the things around the city that we wanted to do, so it was a matter of let's-not-miss and better-rest-up. We first headed back to the Barcelona Cathedral for a look around. It was honestly pretty dark and stuffy in there. Nick said he felt like something in the air was affecting his sinuses. We didn't stick around too long after that. We walked to yet another market (Santa Catarina's), then walked back toward La Rambla. We found a bar off the main street with 30 beers on tap. Stopped there to sample a few local brews and get the requisite bread-with-tomatoes tapas to tide us over. We walked back to the apartment, checked to make sure everything was okay with our flight from Madrid, then walked up to explore more of Montjuïc. Another gorgeous day. We wandered through gardens, along paths, past museums. We found ourselves by the Olympic Stadium. It was open and free, so we took advantage of that. Quick look around, then back outside. We found the "path of fame", where the footprint of various famous early 1990s athletes were made into large bronze disks set into the pavement. Nick has the same size feet as Michael Jordan :o) We walked back to the apartment and decided to rest. But it's not easy to rest when there's a helicopter hovering that you can see from the window... We learned that while we were out walking, protesters had blocked the Paral-lel road in both directions and the helicopter was watching it. Oh boy. We packed up our stuff, watched some shows, then headed to Carrer de Blai for an early dinner of pinxos. We ate (me, nervously so), had glasses of vermouth, then headed back to the apartment. We killed time watching BoJack, then left the apartment for good at 9:30. We took our bags and headed to the Metro. I was concerned about protests impeding our travel to the bus station, but we didn't have any problems heading there after all, thankfully. We got to the bus station, waited with many other people, got our assigned seats, and left at 11 pm. Gotta love the people on the bus who have no issue crinkling plastic bottles in the middle of the night.

Barcelona Cathedral & Montjuïc

October 18: We managed to get a few hours of sleep before arriving at the transit station in Madrid at 6 am. We caught a bus to the airport and got to our terminal at 6:30 am. We got checked in to our flight, and made the long trek to our terminal. It was surreal being the only people in the terminal for a couple of hours. We rested on the uncomfortable seats, got kicked out of the gate area in order to go through yet another passport check there an hour later. Ugh, but whatever. We were the first in line for the economy class check, and therefore were selected for the random bag check. As were about a third of the passengers. WTF. The flight was long, but left at about 11:45 am local time and got us back to Chicago a bit after 2 pm CDT.

Some other collections of pictures of things we saw:

To market, to market!

The drinks we drank

Details, details

Strange and unusual sights

Second Honeymoon

Nick and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary in May. We decided that we finally had the means and motivation to do something I've wanted to do for years - take a trip to Europe. We started making plans way back in January of this year, pulling the trigger on what would become our second honeymoon. We decided on visiting Munich (my choice) and Prague (Nick's) this time around. Reader, beware: many pictures of beer be herein.

August 16/17: Travel Day & Arrival in Munich

Our adventure began on Thursday, August 16. We drove the kids up to stay with Nick's parents for the first half of our trip (they'd be staying with mine for the second), then drove down to Chicago. It's a good thing I planned for us to get to O'Hare two and a half hours early - the economy lots we were monitoring we all full and we had no backup plan. Fortunately, one was accepting vehicles when we arrived. Panic #1 subsided. We hopped on the bus to take us to the terminals. Cue Panic #2 - they had one flight to Munich leaving from Terminal 1, and we couldn't pull up our gate information fast enough to see if it was ours. We hopped off at Nick's insistence that we could catch another bus if it wasn't our flight. Thankfully, it was. We then spent the time before our flight waiting in several lines, finding our gate and celebrating the fact we made it that far with an overpriced beer.

Our flight was a little behind schedule, but we still took off by 6:30 pm. We tried to sleep on the red-eye but neither one of us could get comfortable. I ended up watching Pitch Perfect 3 and the flight information channel. We got into the Munich airport around 9:30 am Friday morning, and had little problem going through their customs and baggage. We bought tickets and made our way to the S-bahn platform. We loaded on to the train we needed to get to our apartment and away we went. We got to our stop, then lugged our luggage for a couple of blocks to our Bogenhausen neighborhood apartment which I found on Airbnb. We were too early to get in, so we backtracked a block and found a little pub at which to eat and drink while we waited. I dusted off my very rusty German. (Too rusty, apparently. The server didn't understand me and brought two meals instead of the one I wanted). We checked into our lovely, cool, bottom-floor apartment and relaxed. 

Since it was only midday and we were finally in Germany, I got my second wind and dragged us out to explore. This was my third time in Munich, so I had a few places I wanted to show Nick. Nick, however, was mainly interested in sampling all the beers Munich had to offer, but gamely followed my lead. We took the U-bahn to Odeonsplatz and walked through the hot, crowded streets. I wanted to get my souvenir hunt out of the way, so I found the store I had heard about online that sold reasonably priced Tracht (traditional German clothing). We walked out many minutes later with my purchase of a classy silver silk dirndl, tasteful blouse, and teal apron. I wanted something that I could wear to more than just Oktoberfests (and in fact, I did wear it to the wedding we attended the weekend after we returned :o). Next, we headed for Nick's desired souvenir - a memory of another beer. We found a Hackerhaus restaurant and sat under the umbrellas in the street. We learned first-hand that there are bees a-plenty this summer in Munich... We relaxed and enjoyed the atmosphere, although it was pretty warm (high 80s). I realized where we were in the city, and after finishing our beverages, took Nick down the street to see the Asamkirche. This church was like a model house for builders - the brothers showed off everything they could do. So much Baroque detail crammed into a tiny space.

It was getting to be close to 5 pm, so we headed up to the Marienplatz so Nick could witness the Glockenspiel at the Neues Rathaus. We joined an enormous crowd of other tourists waiting. And then the bells played and played and played and then the little figures moved slowly and that was it. If you're expecting an exciting spectacle, look elsewhere... We struck out to find dinner. I led Nick to the Hofbräuhaus. It was pretty crowded, but we were lucky to find a table inside. We ordered beers, a giant pretzel and a cold cut plate. We headed back to our apartment after that, as exhaustion was starting to set in.

August 18: Munich Museums

Since I had been to Munich twice before, I let Nick take the lead on our first full day. He decided: museums! Before we went to his picks, I led us up to the Olympic Park via the U-bahn so he could see where the 1972 Olympics took place. We didn't do much exploring there; instead, we did a brief tour of the BMW World building, then headed back down into the city. Nick had never seen Greek or Roman statues in person, so our first stop was the Glyptothek. I'm not really much of an art museum-goer. There's only so much interest that the same pose or scene holds for me. But I tried, even finding a Roman doppelgänger. Once we had exhausted that museum, we found a quick bite then continued to the Alte Pinakothek (the old art gallery). Painting after painting of biblical scenes and portraits with a few Rubens thrown in for good measure. A few interested me, but after a while, I started to take more of an interest in the frames around the paintings instead.

Once Nick had his fill, we went to museum #3 for the day: the Residez - the former home of the Wittelsbach monarchs. That had much more interest for me. We opted to do the Treasury, too, and were impressed by the 500+ year old handiwork on crowns, vessels, tables, boxes, you name it. We also toured the lavish apartments, and saw an unsettling collection of relics that included at least 3 infant skeletons. Yikes. My feet were getting sore by the time we wrapped up there, so we headed nearby and ate an early dinner at the Spatenhaus restaurant by Max-Joseph Platz. It was still early and becoming a beautiful evening, so we took a tram toward the English Garden. We walked the few blocks up to and into the park. I showed Nick where the surfers ride the waves, and we walked up to beer garden at the Chinese Tower. We realized we were low on Euros at this point, so we both ended up with 1 liter beers to meet the credit card minimum. We enjoyed the Gemütlichkeit of being in one of the largest beer gardens in Munich with an oompah band playing and people all around. That feeling lasted until we went to take out more money from the ATM and realized that we only brought our credit cards along on the trip and didn't have a PIN. The mood turned rather sour after that. (learn from our mistake - take your debit card!). We headed back to our apartment and tried to formulate a plan... I had a rough night of feeling helpless and like an idiot about the situation.

August 19: Mike's Bike Tour

It was Sunday and there wasn't much we could do to change our cash situation, so we made the best of it. We had already bought tickets to go on a Mike's Bike Tour of Munich, so our itinerary for the day was set. We headed to the Marienplatz early and met up with our tour group at 9:30. I had been on the classic bike tour both of my previous times in Munich, so this time we went for the longer Superior bike tour. Our guide, Kevin, was from Ireland and very knowledgeable. This tour got more in-depth on pre- and post-WWII history, which Nick liked. We ate a good lunch back at the Chinese Tower beer garden and were visited by what I think was an Asian giant hornet. Egads. After the tour, we headed back to the apartment and rested. We struck out for dinner, not having much luck finding a place that accepted credit cards. Ended up at a nice little Vietnamese restaurant.

August 20: Mittenwald

Today we headed out on a day trip to the Alps. We took the 8:30 am train from the main train station down to Mittenwald, a little town in an Alpine valley on the German-Austrian border. It was much cooler in the mountains than it had been in Munich. We walked through the pedestrian area with the lovely painted buildings and headed down and out of town. We first struck out on the walking path that would lead us to the Leutaschklamm, a steep gorge. We hiked up the narrow switchback trail, trying to keep our footing on the gravel path. Finally making it to the top we found ourselves on a catwalk to the suspension bridge hung hundreds of feet over the rushing river below. I have a slight issue with heights and a walkway through which I can see and a small swaying bridge did little to allay my fears. At that point, my chief concern was to not drop my phone over the rail. We hightailed it back to the start of the path shortly after that.

We walked back into Mittenwald, stopping at the Brauerei Mittenwald for lunch. My appetite hadn't been great the last couple of days, but it was starting to come back. Good beer helped. After eating, we walked to the mountains on the other side of town and took a gondola up to the top of the Karwendelspitze. It was about 50-60 degrees and clouds were coming in when we got up there. We figured we had some time, so we hiked around the loop from the welcome station. At the far side, we saw that we were on the border with Austria. Lovely views, although visibility was obscured by clouds which grew steadily heavier as we were up there. Nick developed a bloody nose from the dry air, and so we didn't waste much time finishing our hike. We headed back down in the gondola (completely full this time) and then on to the train station. We caught the next train to Munich and headed back to our apartment. We cooked dinner on our apartment that night and started packing to leave the next morning.

August 21: Traveling to Prague

I had purchased train tickets to go from Munich to Prague today and after having checked the timetable the day before at the station, we said goodbye to our apartment and got to the train station at 8 am. We bought some breakfast and went to find our train. Which wasn't at the track the timetable stated. Or anywhere else, for that matter. We were told that there was no train to Prague today. Say what? We then headed to the ticketing office, where we were informed that the only way we could get to Prague today was by bus. Not ideal, but as it was our only option, we took it. At least we had gotten there early and had time to spare. We walked to the bus station, both frustrated by the change of events and the fact that one of our suitcases was locked and the combination wouldn't work. At least we now had a couple of hours to sit and wait and attempt to crack the code. After a couple of minutes of work, I figured out how I had mis-set it to begin with, and once opened, reset it properly.

The bus arrived, we got on, and away we went. We had nice seats up front on the double-decker bus. The trip was about 4.5 hours with only one brief stop to change drivers, so it took less time that the train would have. Once in Prague, I heaved a deep sigh of relief once we had the Czech Koruna in hand that I had asked my mom to wire to us via Western Union the day before. Cash! Whew! We hopped on the first tram that would take us to our Airbnb apartment, a lovely little place on the second floor overlooking a busy street. It was hot here, too. Thankfully, there was a sturdy fan to provide some air movement. After checking in and settling in to the place, we headed out to get my Prague souvenir - a nose piercing. I've wanted my nostril pierced for years, and thought it would be an interesting reminder of the trip. We found the shop at which I wanted it done, not too far from our apartment. They were busy but I made an appointment to come back later, so we found a nearby bar to try our first Czech beers. Pleasantly relaxed from the beer, we headed back to the shop and I got my nostril pierced. A brief sting and done! We next headed out to find dinner. Our first attempts were overcrowded, but we found a little pizza place that looked appealing and had a nice dinner there. We finished up the night walking through the Republic Square and buying a few souvenirs before taking the tram back to our apartment.

August 22: Prague Sights

We headed out early to take the trams up to the Prague Castle. We got there right around opening time. As did so many others... Especially Asian tour groups. They were everywhere! We bought our tickets and headed right for St Vitus. It was very impressive inside, and the morning sunlight did wonderful things to the stained glass. We didn't linger very long there (very crowded). We passed on touring the old palace (too similar to the Residenz), walked through the basilica, and headed out. My feet weren't happy, so we took it easier today. We left the castle grounds and hopped a tram to get to the other side of the river.

There, we found a lovely little cafe. After refreshing ourselves, we headed up to the Charles Bridge. It was a 90 degree day, and there were so many people out and about. We walked the length of the Charles Bridge, then headed over to the Jewish Quarter. The lines were exceptionally long, so we headed toward the old town square instead (why we thought that would be less busy...). The Astronomical Clock was being repaired, so we didn't even get a glimpse of it. Instead, we walked on toward Wenceslas Square and found a cafeteria-style restaurant. Good traditional food, beer and prices. We then walked back toward Republic Square. We caught the tram back to our apartment, made reservations at the pub next door for dinner, then headed up for a video chat with the kids. We relaxed until dinner time, then had some nice traditional fare and beer at the Lokal next door.

August 23: More Prague

We really didn't have any plans for the day. We decided to head toward Wenceslas Square. We walked and saw the Kafka statue that was installed a few years ago. Pretty neat how the slices of his head rotate (that sounds weird to say, but that's exactly what it does). We headed back to the square, bought some postcards for the kids, then found a tiny cafe at which I could write on them. The waitress was happy to practice her English on us and told us that they hadn't had a summer as hot and dry as this in many years. It was shaping up to be another 90 degree day. We finished up there, then headed to the square. It's the 50th anniversary of the Prague Spring, so there were more monuments and memorials around.

We found a post office and mailed the postcards. It was near the Mucha Museum, so we went there and viewed the exhibits on display. Unfortunately, the Slav Epic is on tour, so there was no hope of seeing that. We walked through Old Town to the Republic Square and went to try traditional open-faced sandwiches for lunch. I thought they were pretty tasty, but Nick was getting overheated. We headed for a beer club near our apartment, where Nick had his pick of hundreds of bottles or six on tap. It was cool and quiet, just what we needed. After imbibing and relaxing, we headed back to our apartment. We struck out for a restaurant in the Karlin neighborhood that was a tankovna (serving beer delivered fresh from breweries in tanks instead of kegs) and had some good food and drink there. We took a nice, leisurely stroll through the neighborhood before heading back to our apartment for the evening.

August 24: Pilsner Urquell

We picked Plzen (Pilsen) as our day trip location for our time in Prague. We got train tickets and headed out in our own private compartment to Pilsen. It was about a 1.5 hour trip with some very beautiful scenery. It was cooler and cloudy today. We had brewery tour tickets for 1:00, and since we were early, we found a restaurant and had lunch. We ate on the back patio and made friends with a neighborhood cat. :o)

We walked back to the other side of the train station, determining that Pilsen was much scruffier than Prague. Much more dilapadated, at least where we were. It didn't leave us feeling too comfortable walking around. At least it was daytime, and we were aware of our surroundings. We made our way over to the Pilsner Urquell Brewery. We were early for our tour, so we stopped for a fresh beer at the pub onsite first. While we were in there, it started pouring rain. Good thing the tour was mostly inside!

Since Nick and I do some homebrewing, we have an appreciation for brewing on a large scale. We had a knowledgeable, English-speaking guide. We got to see the bottling plant, old brew house, new brew house and part of the underground tunnel system where the beer was fermented. They still make batches of beer the old-fashioned way for tour groups to sample. We ended the tour in the gift shop (of course). We purchased a few souvenirs and then headed back to the train station. We had some time to kill, so we first found a cafe and had a coffee before we left. It occurs to me that our beverages on this trip were primarily coffee and beer. We took the train back to Prague. This train was full, and had a very unhappy toddler sitting in our car. That wasn't very nice... We got back to our apartment then headed out to find dinner, ending up at nice Karlin neighborhood restaurant.

August 25: Last Day in Prague

It was a much cooler day today. We headed out early to go down to the Vysehrad fortress. It was nice and quiet down there, with few tourists. We walked around, visiting the interesting cemetery where many well-to-do Prague citizens were buried. One was Antonin Dvorak, the composer. After we walked past his tomb, we heard a man shouting "Antonin! Antonin!" and then classical music playing. An older Asian gentleman was holding his cellphone aloft and jamming to the piece. Odd way to pay one's respects, yet fitting. We finished walking around, then headed back toward town on the Metro. We wanted to find a place to eat brunch, and ended up walking to the cafe at which we stopped two days before.

Once fed and rested, we headed up along the river to the Prague Beer Museum, which was not a museum, but rather a pub with 30 beers on tap. We tried a few at our leisure, before heading back out. We meandered back through Old Town to Republic Square. We headed back to our apartment, then got ready for dinner. We had a nice dinner, then went to find a wine bar for something different. We found one on our street that was serving burčák, a young, still-fermenting Moravian specialty wine. It's good. We had a nice, quiet night, packing up to leave in the morning.

August 26: Heading Home

We woke early (5:30 am local, 10:30 pm CDT). We got to the airport without issue with plenty of time. We spent our remaining Czech cash on coffee, macarons and a bottle of slivovice (plum brandy), then headed home. We first flew to Zurich, where we had a short layover, then a much longer flight back to Chicago. We, alas, had an unhappy toddler kitty-corner from us. At least he slept for a few hours. We amused ourselves as best we could on the flight, then landed in Chicago at 3:30. We went through customs and were quite relieved to see our bags (our car key was in one of them). We headed home, getting back to our house and kids at 8:30 pm.

All of our pictures are here. If you're interested in where exactly (and I do mean exactly - trains, trams and all) we went, I made this Google map. Videos I took on the trip are here.

The beers were all bigger than me, but I won. I think.