Time and Times Past in Prague

We just returned from an amazing two weeks in Eastern Europe with NER helping us get around.  We may have been able to do part of this without his help, but I don't think we could have survived or experienced Ukraine the way we did without his language skills and know how.    We visited Prague, Cracow, Lviv and Kyiv with a few hours in Amsterdam on the way home. 
It will take several posts to share the fun.  I will try to not share the fatigue.  There was plenty of that as we adjusted to the time difference and traveled by overnight trains with middle of the night border crossings.  These destination cities have also become destinations for parties of young people well into the night.  One place we stayed provided ear plugs, a thoughtful and useful gesture.

Prague was beautiful, amazing and overflowing with tired tourists.  Some of the pictures do not tell that story as we got up early to avoid crowds.  We were well tired by our last day there.  The first day and first thing was a trip to see the clock.    

  
I love that the feast days and the zodiac co-exist on this face of the clock.
We got there just as the apostles were coming out of the window for their hourly tour.  We went back another early morning to understand the mechanisms and information provided by this beautiful timepiece.

No family vacation in our family is really complete without a stop in a cemetery.  In Prague the cemetery was the Jewish Cemetery that is part of the Jewish synagogue tour.  This cemetery was used for centuries.

   You don't get to take pictures in the synagogues but it is rather interesting and the first one we went into had written on the walls the names of people who were killed in the holocaust of WWII.  People still leave tokens on the headstones, perhaps for family but perhaps to remember and honor the victims.  This unknown woman was a French speaker.

 

This building was the building of the burial society and housed artifacts related to burial - not as gruesome as it might seem.  As you can see the crowds are increasing.