Secrets 

After a day of eating my little heart out on the Eating Prague Tour (cabbage soup! sandwich with beet spread! dumplings and gingerbread and more beer!) spending a few minutes digesting while it downpours. I’ll venture back out in a bit. I think tonight I’ll do some shopping and take it easy… if the rain lets up I may mosey down to Charles Bridge but I don’t think it’s going to. Thankfully, this is the last day of rain expected while I’m here. I don’t mind a wee bit of rain but it’s not a simple thing to read a book and juggle an umbrella and actually see where you’re going when you don’t have extra hands.

But to backtrack a little on yesterday…

Met a lovely man — a doctor named Jordan — on the plane ride over. I know he has kids (his son is obsessed with sports which we talked about a bit once he realized where I worked). No idea of his marital or dating status but he does have my card, and honestly… it gives me more to think about in my own dating life. I really connected with this guy. It was funny, easy, and natural. It was like that with Ed, too. I KNOW how this feels. So if it doesn’t feel like that, if everything seems like a struggle, then it’s probably not a good match, no matter how much the other person acts like he wants it. So there’s that to look forward to when I get back. Sigh.

The apartment is pretty much exactly how it looked in the pictures. It is not fancy but it is very clean and quiet and safe and perfectly located, quite literally in the middle of everything, so you cannot beat that. Plus I get my stairs for the day climbing in and out. Dominik is my host and he is transporting me to the airport. He’s adorable (I realized he was a kid and then a half-second later realized I dated someone his age for quite some time. Again, sigh.) But the AirBnB experience was so far been spot on.

Yesterday involved a great deal of walking. Over 10 miles, in fact, but I really wanted to get a feel for where I was. Beacuse it was raining, I chose to talk the Wenceslas Square route, and what I wasn’t able to see yesterday because it was closed (mainly the Francescan Gardens) I got to see on the eating tour. Still to come are the Jewish Quarter and Prague Castle/montastery (which I hope to do Sunday). Krumlov is tomorrow which I’m really excited about. And shopping, which I may get to tonight. We’ll see how all of it goes. Monday is still wide open and I want to linger on the bridge at some point. Travling alone has been a godsend, really. Except for the lack of an extra set of hands and the selfies snuggling with your partner, it’s been blissful in terms of doing what I want, when I want and when I feel like it. Joy!

After seeing a light festival in the Old Town Square I wandered to find this French restaurant, Chez Marcel. The food was great, but the best part was meeting Martin, the waiter. First he made the first Czech joke I’ve heard (me: “Can I have the cheque?” Him: “I can be the Czech!”), then he helped me take a photo with a giant wine bottle, THEN he showed me down to the subbasement (after I asked where some dark stairs went) to show me a 9th century room they use for dance parties. It was incredible! I screwed up the video but got at least one good picture. It was astonishing — at least 20 degrees cooler down there. Martin said there was another bar nearby with a room two stories below THAT, and that there was a bar in the Wenceslas area with catacombs. He went to all this trouble to make me a map and figure it out, then made a comment as I was leaving about maybe seeing me there. Not sure where he meant, or was just making polite small talk, but a part of me is starting to think maybe I need to focus my attention on Czech men. Because seriously, they seem lovely and for whatever reason, seem to like me well enough. Maybe it’s because I learned how to say ‘thank you’ properly in Czech.

After that, really I just wandered about, and that… is really the magic of Prague. I took a few pictures but it doesn’t do it justice. It is not an exaggeration to say the place feels magical, especially at night, when it quiets down and the crowds start to thin out. It sort of feels like you’re always being watched, but not in a predatory sort of way. (In fact, I’ve not felt even the slightest bit threatened once here.) It may have to do with all the patron saints and martyrs and knights look down at you from every turrett and overhang. Maybe it’s all of them buried under your feet, along with centuries of history. Maybe it’s the winding, narrow streets and always feel like something is just around the corner. Maybe it’s all of it together. But there’s a presence to the city I’ve not felt anywhere else. It’s mysterious, and private, and secretive. I’ve become especially obsessed with Tyr Church, which looms over the entire square like some dark, medieval overlord — but again, not in an oppressive way. It’s just fanciful enough to negate that. But it seems to stand sentry, this dark hulk rising over the rest of the square, solid and knowing. It has all the secrets and knows all of yours.

I got to go into it today — no pitcures — and while it was very impressive in there, all soaring ceilings and gold and Hapsburg flags and reliefs where knights are buried — it’s the exterior that really catches my attention. I have to look for it every time I enter the square. It’s strange, but in an intriguing sort of way.

There are many doors, huge or tiny, unmarked, but you can hear voices coming from within. Homes? After-hours parties? Ghosts? Could be anything, honestly, and not sure I want to know which it is. All the stones in the street are polished and slick, different colors and textures and patterns. You weave from main thoroughfare to tiny alley in a manner of seconds. It’s disarming and any other place, would be a little frightening, but not here. Not for me, anyway.

I already know I have to come back, and not just because there’s absolutely no way I’m going to be able to get close to getting everything in…