Thursday, 5/26

We've been doing so much walking, I have not been feeling a shortage of exercise. Nonetheless, I decided to start the day with a workout. After I did my normal dynamic stretching routine a few times, I decided to get serious about jumping rope. Boy, Rick Buren was right - it's a killer workout in a short time! I jumped for about five or six minutes, and felt the burn. 

Then Rebecca and I went to ride the funicular. A funicular is a pair of inclined cable trains, that counterbalance each other whilst running up and down a slope. Now THERE's a word you hardly ever run into outside of a BBC broadcast. 

Anyway, the funicular in Prague runs up Petrin Hill. It was built in 1891, and was quite popular until it closed during WWI. It reopened in 1931, only to close again in 1965, after a flood.  It came back in 1981, and was completely renovated in 2014-2015. Oh, one funny thing about it is that the car is built so the people and their seating is level, despite the steep grade of the tracks, and concomitant tilt.

I may have forgotten to take a picture of the funicular, but here's the view of the track. I think you can get a sense of how steep it is. 

There's a tower on top that bears some resemblance to the Eiffel Tower despite being one fifth its size. Apparently, the elevation of the observation decks is the same, because the Petrin Hill tower is built on a hill.  Anyway, we climbed it. It's three hundred steps to get to the top.

Here's a view looking down at the old city.  Unfortunately, it was just a bit hazy.

Here's another view from the top.

And another from the bottom. 

Rebecca, looking pretty as a picture.

There's a Mirror Maze there, too.

In the afternoon, we took a train to a park out of the downtown part of the city. Something about this caught my eye. I think it's the similarity between the place name Prosek and the drug Prozac, combined with Thai Massage.

Anyway, the park has a toboggan run! No lie. Here's the poster.

And here's Rebecca, taking off.

Rebecca couldn't get enough of this. She said this could not exist in the US. No helmets, no belts, no waiver, the safety spiel in Czech, and no supervision. Boy, was it fun!

One of the top three burgers in Prague, according to a Czech food critic, can be found at a restaurant called Sweet and Pepper Days. It's not too easy to get there. Along the way, we saw some young people getting ready for something. We were too hungry to stick around to see what, though. 

When we got there, the owners were tearing the deck apart. It seems some careless diners had dropped a mobile phone in the space between the boards. Planter boxes, tables and chairs, everything had to be moved for the project. Then they put it all back together. We ate inside, where there were no smokers. It was excellent burgers. Also a really interesting salad of fresh orange, black olives, avocado, and pepper. 

Then we went to see Sam run the trivia contest at a hostel. He's quite entertaining!

Here are Rebecca and Bloss putting their heads together.