Prague
Prague was a nice, short break. We had good weather, better than expected as it could’ve been downright cold and wet (or snowy). I kept my expectations low not because I haven’t heard wonderful things about Prague, but because of the abundance of cheap holiday packages and flights to places like Prague, and this UK phenomenon of hen and stag nights abroad, cities all over Europe are losing their individual appeal.
Sadly Prague is one of these cities losing its identity. It’s has beautiful buildings everywhere you turn your head, but the city centre is overrun by souvenir shops and overpriced cafes catering to the tourist trade. It wouldn’t be so bad if these tourist traps were all within one area, but they aren’t, they’re all over the city. I imagine this is partly because the city centre really isn’t very large so it’s quite easy for it to start centrally (e.g. around the Astronomical clock and square) and then keep spreading.
Some co-workers described visiting Prague 10 years ago. It was a very different Prague I think. They described the Charles Bridge as being a place to enjoy some free classical music as buskers lined the bridge. We only walked across the bridge once and rather bruskly, as it was wall-to-wall with tourists and traders selling tourist tat - even people doing 10-minute caricatures like you find in tacky places like state fairs.
Anyway, it was still very nice to go away and have a few days with just me and The Boy. We ate several nice meals and did lots of gross coupley things like snogging and handholding. *grin* As you can see, I’ve posted up a few pictures, but you can see the full set of pictures on my flickr site.
As far as knitting, I did none while in Prague (see above about snogging and handholding), but did some very minimal stuff on the flights to/from. I even managed to knit myself a memory of Prague in a minor error that I didn’t feel like fixing because tinking back on two socks on magic loop is quite painful. Maybe I’ll be brave and try laddering… doubtful as this is so really quite minor and it will only be visible if I’m walking about in my stockinged feet. [There's me in my Cinnabar scarf!]
So that’s my little knitting update. Oh we did pass several shops that seemed to sell a bit of wool, but they were closed and the offerings looked pretty dismal anyway (ugly colours and novelty yarns mostly as well as looking like it was mostly acrylic). We went on Saturday to have a look at one of the shops only to discover that pretty much every place that isn’t a huge department store closes by lunchtime on Saturday. Oh well - I really don’t need more wool anyway - except for wool to knit Sizzle in. And I think I found the right wool - Elann Peruvian Quechua in aubergine. Even if I get it shipped airmail, it’s cheaper than many options I have here!PS Sorry for any large white spaces that may be in this post. I’ve just upgraded Wordpress and the editor seems to be missing some elements and when I try to put in my own HTML, it strips it out! Grrr.