Today the weather was crazy--beautiful blue skies and sun one moment and then pouring rain and tremendous thunder the next. Eva, the mom, said that the weather is not usually so freakish. Eva and the baby and I headed to a shopping mall on the outskirts of Prague since we couldn't go outside. (The two older boys were with their grandparents.)
The shopping mall has an attached parking garage, but rather than take stairs or an elevator to the mall entrance, each floor of the garage has glass doors leading directly to the shops. It was weird to go from underground concrete parking garage to artificially bright mall in one step.
It was also weird because there is a HyperMarket (I think it is their word for supermarket but it makes me chuckle every time) in the middle of the shopping mall. It looks as though a Harris Teeter or Whole Foods or Lowes was pushed against the mall--picture walking through the big entrance to Belk or Dillards or Macy's and instead of a department store there are aisles of food. And even weirder (word of the day) is that people will come out of the HyperMarket (chuckle) and then stroll around the food court or in and out of stores--pushing their loaded grocery carts. Weird!
Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me, but I would like to share some of the store names. There is a western-y clothing store for hip young people called Marlboro Classic. A little down the mall was Pall Mall Clothing, a similar clothing store. Cigarette chic?
The Chevy Cafe with old fashioned Coca Cola signs and pictures of Marilyn Monroe seemed popular, and there was a line for Asian Sun. The customers were probably drawn there by its imaginative slogan, "Good Food." But my favorite name/slogan of the day was the delightfully contradictory sign over a nail salon-- "Euro Nails: American Style." Classic.
To liven this text up I will now add some pictures. My goal is to get a picture of the baby with his super cute chubby cheeks as well as a picture of me to prove that I am indeed here. But for now these will have to do. This is a rather menacing view of the statue of Czech reformer/heretic, (depending whose side you are on,) Jan Hus against the spires of the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn in Old Town Square. The statue is part of the fountain in the middle of the square dedicated to Hus. Sort of a cruel, ironic joke to have a fountain...since he was burned to death for his reformist views.
This is a view of Prague from Prague Castle.
A slice of Venice in Prague! This is right next to the Charles Bridge.
This has nothing to do with the Czech Republic. Just couldn't resist.
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