Life is Beautiful: Prague

Ani and I took a pretty long train ride to Prague (almost 4 hours) to go visit my brother Erik and his family for a couple of days. It was a cold day the first day but we still managed to walk around the downtown, up to the palace and on the famous Charles bridge. I could not believe that on a cold day like that, in the middle of the week, and off season the whole downtown was packed with tourists and locals. I guess there is no time anymore where it doesn"t get crowded which is a bit sad. But on the other hand, I was so impressed by the public transportation there. Bratislava, the town where my parents live, is all right but man what a difference does a subway make. You can literarly get anywhere in Prague in a few minutes without a car and it is so nice. We had Erik and Monika"s 2 boys with us, Tomas is 4 and Simon is 1 and a half. We had 2 strollers with us because we knew Anika was going to be too tired to walk but in the end her and Tomas took turns sitting in strollers, taking naps in them or getting horsy rides. But it was pretty funny when mid way during our walk thru town we stopped at a tiny park to feed Simon some food, and all of a sudden the 2 "very tired" kids had the energy of the world and were running nonstop from one end of the grass to another just to scare off the pigeons. Ani and Tomas both got a kick out of that and I think it might have been Anika"s highlight of the day. After that Ani and Tomas started playing a lot better together and they were playing so cute in their apartment. You could hear they were both speaking their own language, playing hide ad seek and stuff but Anika would try to repeat some words after Tomas that she recognized. It makes me a little sad we don"t have more time for the cousins to really get to know each other whenever we are here. But I hope one day when they are all older they can find some of the same interests and won"t ever be too cool to get to know each other. I know it is pretty easy for most little kids to play together but you can"t order your teenagers to "play" together so I hope they can always enjoy each other and find some things in common. Mom and I were talking how Anika is getting so much more adjusted here this week and she is more herself with everyone. From what I remember the last time I was here and Kade was almost Anika"s age it was the same thing. Around the 3rd week he finally started being himself and really enjoying everything and everyone. Too bad it is so close before we have to leave but that"s how it is.

Here are some of the pictures of Prague, it really is a beautiful city and you could tour it for weeks but that"s not for little kids for sure.