Prague: Day... whatever.

So what exactly have I been up to the last couple of days? Its gotten a bit chillier and greyier, which is too bad, but I've still been able to see a fair amount of the city. On Thursday I visited Prague Castle, which is the city's main tourist attraction. Wandering through it and the surrounding neighborhood is not unlike a trip to Medieval Times except, you know, with less mutton and PATH trains. It's all pretty stunning.

Next I visited Amanda at the Embassy, which is pretty spectacular in its own right: it used to be a palace, and the grounds are vast and impressive. Unfortunately pictures were strickly forbidden, but let's just say it stuck me as a pretty regal place to be working. (Speaking of which, Amanda's apartment, which the Embassy choose for her, is also a palace. Figuratively speaking. God knows how many square feet, two bedrooms, all hard wood and marble: one of the guys from the local professional soccer team lives in the same complex and parks his Lamborghini in the garage; that should tell you all you need to know about it.)

After that, I bummed around for the rest of the afternoon, Amanda and I met for dinner (hurray for pork knuckle!) and a drink, and then we called it a night.

Yesterday I headed over to the DOX, the contemporary art museum, and ended up spending most of the day there. Everything there was really fantastic, but the exhibition on the work of František Matoušek was really spectacular: he does all of his work on stretched denim instead of canvas and it looks amazing (and educational! Did you know that the word "denim" comes from the French "de nimes" as in, "from the city of Nimes"? I sure didn't!).

I met Amanda back at her place so we could head to our evening's activity: a Sparta Prague hockey match. The match was great fun, and actually featured one player who I remembered from the NHL. The fact that that player's name is Radek Bonk had nothing to do with my remembering him. We also honored the great sporting tradition of leaving 5 minutes early to beat the traffic, only to miss the home team's tying goal. Good times.

Next we headed over to the Marines' place. The embassy has a small cadre of Marines guarding (?) the place, and they occasionally host house parties in their--noticing a theme here?--giant freaking mansion. The party featured two small children and the most pathetic display of beer pong since Slabb and I barely managed to take a cup back in Oahu. Note that the children were not the ones playing the beer pong. Should've made that clearer.