Onto Prague...

in case you missed it, for the past 2 weeks brayden and i have been on a mission trip in jamaica - you can read most of the details of our amazing trip at: www.forhisblessedchildren.com

i left the team at charlotte - boy was that crazy!  the team barely made the flight after having to go through immigration, customs & security!!! CRAZY!!! but they all made it:)  after i made sure they got on the plane to seattle, i headed over to my gate - my heart sank when i saw that it was delayed for over an hr, i would surely miss my connecting flight to germany.  i quickly found an agent (not at the gate of my flight:( ) by that time, i was pretty emotional after getting the team on their flight, saying goodbye to bv and then knowing that i may miss my connecting flights - she was so gracious and helped me tremendously!!  I was able to get on the flight at her gate - which happened to supposed to have left at 6 but was delayed until 7 which allowed me to get on that flight and some better connecting flights which allowed me to get to prague earlier which allowed me to meet up with lance to see taylors first game!!!  God is soo good! :)

i was soo happy to walk out of baggage claim to see my hubby! hadn't seen him in 2 weeks:(  we jumped into our rental car and headed northwest for an hour to chomotov - our gps almost got us there perfectly! it took us to the "old" hockey rink (i think they need to update address on the website :) )   luckily, we just stopped  and asked some people walking on the road where the hockey is - they knew the word "hockey" - smiled and pointed us in the direction.  when we arrived, i was shocked - the building is very big and tons of people were coming to watch this exhibition game - concessions and everything... i thought for sure we were at the wrong rink but we weren't!  we eventually met up with other usa parents too.

These pics are from my phone and aren't very good...

pregame lineup

tv is #20 blue

after i got some hugs & kisses from my big boy (and gave him a few items - including a fan for his hotel room), we headed back to prague to check into our hotel.  we are staying at a monastery that has partially been converted to a hotel.  http://www.hoteladalbert.cz/  it is pretty cool - not your usual "marriott" but very comfortable and european... 

today began with bkfst at the hotel - they offered some interesting items that i don't usually see at bkfst time - i stuck with "safe" things: yogert (kinda sour), eggs, toast ;)  i might try to take a pic of the bkfst spread tomorrow... we were then picked up by taxi and taken to our segway tour.  we took a 3 hr segway tour - it was soo much fun - i think we will do it again on thursday through a different part of prague.  below are a few pics of what we saw:

pics from my icky phone:

and from my little camera:

over looking "lesser town"

example of buildings showing communism on the right and democracy on the left...

painted in windows for aesthetics or less taxes - they used to be taxed on the # of windows

darn - i forgot to rotate the pic - the entire building was etched in this "envelope" design

in front of the castle - we will tour it later

this was at a garden "belvedere" ?? i think - i forgot to rotate this pic too - i loved the  arches

the fountain at the garden

look carefully at the bottom of the bowl and notice where the water is coming from - i had to take a close up - too funny!!!

overlooking the bridges of prague

metronome - this used to be the location of the statue of Stalin... (sorry it's sideways:( )

at about this point, we got a call from tv that we could meet up with him for a few hours - we were on the other side of the river:( we cut our segway tour short so we could see him.  i was pretty impressed that we were able to navigate our way out of lesser town, over the charles bridge to the old town clock tower!  we hung out & shopped with him until about 4:45:

old town clock tower

getting a shake

meeting up with the team

then lance and i headed to our dinner reservations at "mylnec" - it was a super nice restaurant and we got to sit outside on the river right next to the famous charles bridge.  after dinner we navigated our way to the "estates theatre" to watch a "mini" opera by mozart.  it was pretty cool - our first opera!  we didn't know how we were going to get home afterwards - luckily there was a taxi outside b/c it was raining - we negotiated a price before we got into the taxi (many taxi's will rip you off if you don't do this beforehand...) he got lost on the way to our hotel & wasn't very happy that we asked for changed on our fare - we thought we were paying too much anyway - oh well we are "stupid americans" hahaha:)

charles tower bridge (small section)

more charles bridge