Falling in love with e bikes!

Yesterday we'd booked an e bike tour - yes as it's so hilly in Prague, they have electric bikes!  Liam loved his from the first minute and swears he needs one of his own desperately.  www.ebikerprague.com if you are ever over this way! It was pretty cool to whizz up a steep hill while just pedaling at a leisurely rate!  As it was pretty cold though - around 4 degrees - I turned the motor off anytime we were on a flat bit so I could pump my legs a bit harder and keep the blood circulating.  We went all around the city, up to the castle - where Bert told us some interesting info about the lovely brass doors of the cathedral; past lots of gorgeous buildings; through the city orchard (yes, the city has a huge orchard on the side of a hill where the local populace can pick apples, cherries, grapes and almonds during the season!); to the famous graffiti wall (during communist times the locals would paint Beatles graffiti on it, and the commies would paint over it, then it would happen all over again, a sign of Czech resistance) - about 18kms in total.  We really enjoyed it and I'd recommend the tour!  It included a picnic lunch.  It was not really a picnic sort of day, and Liam and I opted to save our bun as we stopped to feed the swans.  They are pretty big birds out of the water, and not afraid to grab a finger while they snapped the bread or apple we fed them, but there were no injuries!
After the ride Bella needed to go straight back to the apartment to urgently complete some school work.  She had been successfully ignoring the fact that it needed to be done, but a deadline is a deadline!  Greg went with her to do some work too.  So that left Liam and I on our own to explore Prague.  We had a map, we had money - off we went.
Our first stop was a cafe to buy a hot chocolate to warm up from our ride!  However I saw gluhwein was cheaper than hot chocolate, so that sounded like a good idea to me.  Hot wine warms you right down to the end of your toes! Liam also had a cake.  This was when I discovered that Greg has actually taken all the money, less 200 Czech crowns, out for safe keeping.  Don't worry!  I still had my credit card :-) I had just enough cash to pay for our snack.  We've discovered that while most tourist areas will take credit cards, there are plenty of hotels (like the one we are staying at in Prague), restaurants, shops and even food shops in Europe that only want cold hard cash!
We had a map but I fancied I knew the direction we needed to take to the castle.  You may think this was the gluhwein talking, really it's just a pain taking my glasses off to read the map, putting them back on again to check the spelling of the street sign, especially when it's pretty cold and you just want to keep on moving. So, we found the famous Astrological clock!  And passed lots of gorgeous buildings!  And even (although we didn't realise it at the time) found Wenceslas Square.  We were having a lot of fun but eventually Liam pointed out that although it was quite entertaining, we were in fact pretty hopelessly lost, and we needed some assistance.  He provided this by stopping to buy a dagger (I've lost count of the amount of knives this boy has now) at a Smithy's shop (this turned out to be in Wenceslas Square - yes, its Wenceslas as in Good King Wenceslas) and asking for some directions to the Charles bridge.  Yay, we found the bridge, and crossed it safely (it is reknown for pick pocketers, although they would have been a bit sad if they'd picked our pockets, with both of us out of cash!) and started the climb to the castle.  However, we passed a clock and saw it was 3.10pm.  Due to the early closing, the last entry into castle exhibits is 3.20pm.  There was no way we could make the climb and get to the exhibit we wanted to see in 10 minutes, so reluctantly we headed back to Wenceslas Square, as we'd arranged to meet Greg & Bella at 5.30pm.  Liam offered to read the map (this was made easier by the fact that we knew this time exactly where we were on the map, in my defence!) and we set off.  We resolved to stop in shops as we went along, mainly to warm up, as we had two hours to fill in.  This did mean I did a little tiny bit of shopping!  One of my purchases is a snood.  I'm still searching for that elusive perfect hat.  I did find one I really liked in Vienna but it was 199 Euros.  A bit steep for a hat I'll barely ever wear again.  I'm going to try out my snood today - it works as a scarf/hat combo according to the picture!
We found the statue of Good King W with no problem (passing the Smithy stall, which is when we realised we'd been here before).  It would help if Wenceslas Square actually was a square - I'm sure we would have identified it earlier!  In fact it's very, very long rectangle with roads on either side and a pedestrian walking area in the middle, and the statue right at the very end.  It's also well known for pick pockets and general drunkenness and bad behaviour, but we managed to escape both.  Liam and I checked out the restaurants lining the "square" to find one that wasn't outrageously expensive - not an easy task.  They must think all tourists have loads of money!!  I wish we did!
We had to wait for Greg and Bella.  They were only 7 minutes late, but let me tell you, when it's zero degrees (or minus 10, which is what it felt like) every minute counts!  I was very keen to get somewhere to warm up again.  We stopped at one of the restaurants Liam and I had identified as a possible, and Greg was very taken with the Czech special, which was a whole roasted duck, smoked pork, roasted pork knee, spareribs, three big Czech pork sausages, cabbage, dumplings (bread and potato ones) - $75.  Greg mis-read the price, as he though it was 750 Czech crowns not 1750 cz, but we were committed by then.  See the pic.  I did my bit by eating a huge amount of duck, but despite valiant efforts by Greg and Bella, the platter was not finished!  It could easily have fed 6 people.
Well now we are going to check out of here (sadly, we've really liked this apartment!) and visit the National Museum before driving back to Germany, to Bavaria this time, to spend a few days with Aaron and Antonia Gregg!  Happy birthday to my little sister Suzy :-)