Most of our tour was in the Jewish sector of Prague. This was the beautiful Pinkas Synagogue, dedicated to the Czech Jews in the Holocaust.
We were able to peek inside the walls of an ancient Jewish graveyard, called the Old Jewish Cemetery. The Jews were given a tiny space to bury the deceased, and by religious beliefs do not remove any old gravestones. The overcrowded cemetery had a story to tell.
This is the oldest active synagogue in Europe, completed in 1270.
We also made it into the National Museum after a two hour wait in line. It was so cold! We took turns sneaking off to a bathroom across the street....not to use the facilities, but to warm our hands under the heated hand dryer!
A place that might not be in most walking tours, but was certainly in the "Prague Walking Tour by Papa" was to see the church of John Huss. He is considered the first church reformer, as he came before Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli. He was executed in 1415 and died at the stake, praying for his enemies and refusing to recant his beliefs. This church was where the Bohemian preacher spoke to the people. I am so deeply grateful for the "real life history lessons" my children have gotten to have through our travel. I felt it was an honor to visit where he preached.
We read that this building was covered up. When they began to renovate, they found this ancient paintings had been preserved underneath.
We did some final touring of the downtown area and enjoyed the beauty all around us.
And I avoided the giant bears!
It was time to head home, so we had our one last nice Prague breakfast and headed to the airport. We had rain and snow while we were there. Also, it is our practice to walk everywhere we can. So many days we would either be wet, cold, or tired, and just ended up on our hotel rooms. We started a game of "Draw Something" which is a phone game where you are given a word, must draw it, then it sends it to someone else. We had so much fun drawing things for each other and guessing. I am the ONLY non-artist in my family, so much of the fun was just trying to figure out what I was even drawing. CC's drawings were so good, I took a screen shot of them to save them! We also played Uno except with the version taught to me by my children, taught to them by their Korean friends. It's called Korean Uno and it involves slapping certain Uno cards and being silent on others. We did see some beautiful things in Prague, and I'm glad we went. But I suppose most of the fun for me was the family time in the room.
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