Flown Home

Well. Prague was beautiful, so beautiful I didn't spend any time on the computer updating the blog:) I liked it there because it reminded me of home but with more parks, roses, concerts, history and interesting architecture. The people were nice but not too nice (ie pick-pockets), the shopkeepers were friendly not jaded, the tourists were plenty but not swarming all over everything. The food was great and reasonably priced (gravy swamped venison with bread dumplings and cranberries plus beer for under ten bucks). Prague mercifully didn't smell like human waste, which Barcelona unfortunately did (on occasion). There were bugs there. When I sat on the grass in Prague Castle to take a nap in the botanical gardens, a welcome ant came crawling up on my shirt. Sigh of relief. That was the one thing that bothered me more than I really thought it would- a week in Barcelona and I did not see an ant, fly, mosquito, bumble bee or spider the entire time.

Even when we kept our hostal room window wide open all day & night for three nights (no screen).

Even at Park Guell (near the flowers for Chrissakes!).

Nothing. It was too weird. (And I don't even like bugs). So all in all, I could live in Prague but not Barcelona.

My flight home from Prague was via Dublin, so I got to see the tiniest part of that city as well. A colleague generously offered to show me around for the few hours I was there, and I was able to see the French Embassy building, currently on the market for 58 million Euros. (Gasp! I'm sure you could buy Cape Breton for that price. Or at least Newfoundland). The transatlantic flight on Zoom airlines was during the day rather than overnight, and I was pleasantly surprised they fed a us a meal (which I enjoyed but I was starving/had subsisted on stolen hotel food for at least two days so probably not the most objective participant) and a snack (ice cream + half a twix bar! Heavenly).

Arriving to the house and there is still stuff to be done. The drywall for the basement arrived yesterday, so I'll be helping to hang that over the next few days if my body ever recovers from the jet lag. My husband is also playing monkey, climbing onto the roof and hanging cladding around the shingles. There is talk of renting heavy equipment this weekend to spread fill for the front and back yards and potentially start the back deck, but we'll see how that goes...my luggage is, as of yet, unpacked.