From last Thursday to Sunday Maggie and I were in Prague; she had a three day / four night teacher training conference, and I bought an additional ticket to tag along.
Prague is a beautiful city; it has a wonderful mass transit network and is easy to walk around in. Czech is a slavic language and so our experiences in Croatia made it a little easier to understand signs and descriptions of things, but fortunately the second language on pretty much everything is English, so that made things very easy. While she was in her training sessions I enjoyed exploring the city, checking out the historic theatres, running a bit in a nature park, visiting some monastic breweries, and even enjoying a cigar on a patio. Here are some photos of the things we did and saw on the trip...
outside the Estates Theatre where Mozart conducted the premiere of Don Giovanni in 1787, with a statue of the Commendatore (a role I have played twice)
At the Brevnon monastery brewery
a cigar on the patio at the Bodeguita
poster advertising the opera Lohengrin; this production was a recreation of the 1967 Wolfgang Wagner staging from Bayreuth... a bit of significant stage history!
the interior of the famous Church of Our Lady before Týn
in the National Theatre for Lohengrin (8 EUR standing room tickets!)
National Theatre Chandelier
before the performance
Maggie in front of the Alphonse Mucha window at the St. Vitus Cathedral
a cool staircase in the Cathedral
beautiful woodcarving that reminds me of Morris and the pre-raphaelite brotherhood
wooden carved maps in the cathedral
angels holding the curtains
inside the 10th-century St. George's basilica
inside the room of an alchemist/scholar in the Golden Lane, a narrow alley between two sets of fortifications with many small houses
the view from the castle environs
mexican tilework in the bathroom of La Cantina
apparently beer and prosecco are on the breakfast menu in Czechia
"Slavs in their original homeland", the first of twenty huge oil paintings from Alphonse Mucha's magnum opus, The Slav Epic, which usually is displayed in Prague
in the Mucha Museum (which I visited)
having a late mornign pivo outside the Estates Theatre
having a late afternoon pivo at the Brevnon monastery café
the view from most of the way up the trail to one of the high points of Divoká Šárka, a nature preserve to the northwest of the city
view from the top
one Czech beer I really liked; the 24% doesn't actually mean 24% ABV, instead it's around 10.5%, but yummy
flying home on the Rackham, one of Brussels Airlines specially decorated planes, this one to celebrate Tintin
Undoubtedly I have missed describing a lot of things that we did, but you get the general idea. The hotel restaurant was excellent and served delicious breakfasts and lunches, and we didn't have a bad meal anytime we went out.
The boys were both ok at home while we were away; Duncan told me today that he likes his brother a lot and that they had a good bonding experience while we were away(!). That's a relief to hear; sometimes having two teenaged boys in the house is a bit challenging. They are both finished regular classes and so are around the house a lot, except in the early mornings when they are writing exams. Malcolm is nearly finished, and Duncan too; I think the last one is on Tuesday, so we will celebrate by going out for a movie and something nice to eat, I would expect.
On monday I was itching to get moving, as my short run in Prague on Friday wasn't very satisfying. I had to drop the car off at the Volkswagen dealer so that they could install the emissions software patch that corrects for the false readings... perhaps you heard about the big Volkswagen emissions scandal? Fortunately our car has a very small diesel engine that emits very little pollution, so we are not too worried, but there are some municipalities that are talking about banning all diesel engines. I hope that doesn't meant that we have to replace Schnelli; it's been a great little car.
But about the running: I headed out directly from the garage and picked up on the back section of the Foret des Soignes 20km loop; followed that until it met up with the middle of the 10km look for about 8km, and then ran another section of the 20km loop that ends up emerging from the forest at the maison communale, which is about 2-3 km from the house. So in all, I ended up doing about 18km and at a pretty fast pace too. I have started to notice that I run much faster after two or three or more days' rest than if I go after just one rest day.
This morning I did some short fast runs: 3km at 4:50/km, a short walk to rest for 200m and then 500m at 4:19/km. I've been reading that short sprinting is a good way to reduce your time on longer runs, so we'll give that a try. I am trying to beat my fastest 5km at 4:55/km set in February in Vancouver, and it's looking like I have a good chance of doing so. Then the next step will be trying to beat my 10km record, which is a stubborn 5:11/km, set on the Leslie Spit in Toronto. I will be happy to get the average pace on 10km down to under 5:00/km if I can!
I also managed to get back into the atelier to do some more guitar work. I have almost finished shaping the neck. Then the next thing will be to do some spray finishing and then the electronics and hardware and we're done!
the shaped and sanded headstock
rasping away the back of the neck for comfort and playability
cabinet scrapers are amazing
laying out "facets" in pencil to ensure a uniform curve along the length of the back of the neck
Yesterday I also took some time out to go meet Bryan in Wavre, and we went to disassemble a pool table that they had found online. It's a lovely German-made table, with 3cm thick slates, each section weighing 70 kg! It was a lot of work to get the thing taken apart, loaded into the van/trailer and then carried in. Reassembly is still in progress but I expect we'll get some use out of it ourselves in July, when we house-sit for them...
The weather here has been really hot. After the pool table move Bryan and I also went and disassembled a metal pavilion that I'm going to set up in the back garden in the new house. It was around 30 degrees while we were taking it down, so we got a little dehydrated. I came home with Maggie after her Zumba dance class, and we had a lovely salade niçoise on the back terrace with the boys...
dinner on the terrace
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