Dempsey Family Europe 2014 Trip: Prague (July 18-20), Amsterdam (July 20), and Antwerp (July 21-22)

Tyn Church in Old Town Prague

Charles Bridge

I was so excited to head to Prague! I went there in 1997 with my mom and the Eastern Oregon community choir for a choir trip. It wasn't too far post-communism at that point and I was anxious to see what changes had happened. It was one of my favorite cities in Eastern Europe and I was excited to show it to David and the kids.

Astronomical Clock in Town Hall

It was still the fairy tale wonderland I remembered, except there are way more tourists! We got to go into the Tyn Church, St. Nicholas church and many others. Prague is unique because they raise money for their churches by holding nightly concerts in the summer. I let David pick the concert and we got to hear the organist at the St. Giles play some Dvorak and Janacek (Czech composers) and also play some other tunes with a violinist (like Vivaldi). It was a pretty good concert. The church, which was part of a Benedictine monastary, was really neat. I liked the message by the priest who opened the concert. He talked about how love was the center of Christianity and that was the message he was trying to spread. It was the only way to peace. That really rang true for me after seeing all of stories about how the peaceful protests brought down the Iron Curtain in 1989. It's just so amazing to see how powerful love and peace were in these countries.

Church at Prague Castle

St. Wenceslas tomb

As far as sightseeing, we also got to tour Prague Castle and walk across the Charles Bridge. The church at the Prague Castle was very interesting because it has the very elaborate grave of St. Wenceslas. It also has some interesting stained glass windows.

Church at Prague Castle

We also stumbled across a folk music festival and got to singers and dancers from across Europe. The boys who were around 10 years old who were Cossack dancers were my favorite. We even took a carriage ride around old town one evening. The last day we toured the Jewish quarter and got to see the old synagogues and cemetery. One synagogue was repainted recently to the pre-WWII look of gold with blue stars. They call it the Spanish Synagogue because it looked like it was done in Moorish style.

Old Jewish Cemetery (about 12,000 tombstones visible, maybe 80,000 people are buried here)

Czech Crystal - I really wanted a set of glasses from here

Spanish Synagogue

We got to purchase several interesting things as well. David and Daniel found old watches in the Jewish quarter that had been repaired and were quite unique. Erin got a modern pocket watch with the astrological clock from town hall pictured on the front. The clock just celebrated its 600th anniversary a few years ago, so it is pretty unique. There was tons of beautiful glass there and I could only bring home a few hardy souvenirs and not nearly as much crystal and glass as I would like!

View of Prague

Tyn Church (I think I took 100 pictures of it!)

Houses in Amsterdam

From Prague we took an overnight train to Amsterdam and spent the day there. Again, there were far more tourists there than I remember from my last visit in 2000. We took a canal tour and then headed to the Van Gogh Museum. We didn't have a lot of time in Amsterdam, but it was a good quick visit. Then we took a train to Antwerp and checked into our hotel. We found a nearby restaurant called Bier Central because David really wanted Kriek beer (cherry beer unique to Belgium). The food was good and David was ecstatic to have Timmermans Kriek (we even had to bring home a few bottles in the suitcase because he liked it so much!).

Houses in Antwerp

The next day we walked around the historic old town of Antwerp and saw some more cathedrals. Daniel suggested that we tally how many cathedrals we entered on this trip. We didn't do anything really exciting that day. I think we were just thinking more about getting home and what will happen next. We headed back to Bier Central for dinner and spent a long tasting and eating. It was a good last night.

On our way home we had to take a really early train to Paris because it was the only one we could get reservations on, but it turned out to be good because we ended up getting bumped up to an earlier and more direct flight home. Of course we had to run through security, but we got seats (even though they had to find a cushion for Erin's seat because it isn't normally used as a passenger seat and they ran out of food before they got to the kids at the very back--we were in row 36 and they were in 64). But it will put us in Atlanta 6 hours earlier and we may even be able to get home tonight! [We did--and it was so nice to be back in our own beds!]