Vacation Part One: Czech Republic and Vienna

Vacation is going great! Driving around in Europe is fun, even if gas is around 8 bucks a gallon. The speed limits are crazy high, if there is one at all. Brian is having too much fun. It scares the hell out of me, to be honest.

A brief explanation of these pictures:

Number one is of one of the many churches in one of the many squares in Prague. Prague is beautiful and nice, but, it has changed a lot, according to Brian. He was here about 12 years ago, and it is much more generic and SUPER expensive, like many other parts of Europe. Plus, despite, being part of the EU, they still use their own money, the Czech Crown. The exchange rate is about 15 to 1, so trying to do the math is weird and it is super easy to get ripped off, which we did in a restaurant the first night until we figured it out. A crappy dinner ended up costing us well over $100. Yikes. But, even a cheap dinner cost $50 or $75 (pretty standard in tourist towns in Europe). But, one our second night there, we had a great dinner in a restaurant called U Flecku that brewed their own 13% beer. Brian was thrilled.

The second picture is the Bone Church in Kutna Hora, Czech Republic. That is Brian standing next to the real bones of dead people. This whole place is decorated in these bones. It is really creepy. The Ossuary is the common grave of about 40,000 people, many of whom died in wars or of the plague hundreds of years ago. Brian thought it was really cool; I was creeped out. I needed to get out of there after about a half an hour.

The third photos is of me standing at the top of the Gloriette at Schombrunn Palace in Vienna. The palace and the city are behind me. This is a gorgeous palace that used to belong to the Hapsburg family, of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We got to go through a ton of rooms, but they didn't allow pictures. We really enjoyed it, but agreed that we'd be miserable living there!

Watch out for another post with pics from Salzburg and Munich right after we get back!