Christmas in Prague...Cross-posted from another blog

First Day in Prague

A few months ago, my wonderful father got it into his head that Prague sounded like a lovely place to spend Christmas, and as no one in my family is one to turn down a travel offer, we all got up well before 5 this morning to head to the airport. After a fairly short flight (I may have been unconscious for most of it) we arrived in the Czech Republic!

The view over the Alps was absolutely breathtaking.

After checking into our apartment rental, we headed down the street to find a nice Czech lunch. Once we had settled on a restaurant, a cheerful waiter let us down about three flights of stairs, some of which took us diagonally so we must have been down in the cavern below the neighboring store. It was quite charming. 

I ordered goulash with bread dumplings, and I will admit I was a little concerned when I was faced with a measly 6 bites of meat-- but let me tell you, I could barely find space in my poor distended belly by the end of it. Between the dumplings, which were like a soft bread that miraculously was able to sit in gravy without getting soggy, and the rich meat, I was left in no doubt about whether I would get along with Czech cuisine. Needless to say, I'm downloading lots of recipes.

Waiting for our food.

By the time we had finished our lunch, it was late enough that we only had a couple of hours of daylight, so we took a casual meander around the city rather than visiting anything in particular (that comes tomorrow). Of course, we did end up in some famous spaces but we'll probably stop back again-- this was really just a brief survey, and Prague did not disappoint. The architecture is lovely, with a beautiful variety in its ornamentation, and everywhere is charmingly decked out for the holidays. As we walked through the bustle, some rendition of "Silent Night" or "Jingle Bells" would find us without fail and carry us on to the next street performer, so we were never without music. Here are some of my photos from today!

Prague's famous medieval astronomical clock, which details the movement of the celestial bodies.

The Christmas market was so charming.

There was even a blacksmith!

The Christmas tree was absolutely stupendous...

...although it clearly required a lot of power.

Now I'll share some of the (many) pieces of architecture I admired in our wanderings.

I love these figures three stories up.

Everything was just so beautiful as the sun was setting.

This detail is so cute!

 Isn't it lovely?? We also stopped in the St. Nicholas Church, which was built in the early 18th century (although its earlier Gothic incarnation is mentioned in documents as far back as 1273) and gracefully combined the Baroque, Classical, and Rococo styles. However, following the religious reform under Emperor Joseph II, the church was essentially ransacked and handed over to the municipality-- which wasn't quite sure what to do with it, so the lovely building was re-purposed first as silo(!) and then as a concert hall before finally being rented out to the Russian Orthodox Church. Since 1920 it has served as a service site of Czechoslovak Hussite Church.

This enormous crystal chandelier dates back to the days of the Russian Orthodox Church (1871-1914).

I think the square cupola is so lovely!

And of course, I had to admire the organ...

Finally, we made our way along the riverfront up to the Charles Bridge. My favorite fun fact from the bridge's long history is that Charles IV is supposed to have laid its first stone on 5:31am on July 9, 1357. This might seem completely arbitrary, but the Holy Roman Emperor was a staunch believer in numerology and he'd been advised that the palindromic nature of this specific time (1357, 9/7, 5:31) would give the bridge additional strength. It may sound silly-- but it is still standing nearly 700 years later, so you tell me!

Here's the bridge tower-- which we ended up climbing! 

The statues are mostly Baroque. Mummy told me that she remembers buying a souvenir (prints of Prague) under this one over thirty years ago!

Casually ornate room halfway up the tower.

Now Jeremy is begging me to play Hearts, so for now, ahoj!

Eleanor

Christmas Toy

This is Michael.  Look at the toy Jeremy and Florence made me for Christmas!

It is about 10" by 7" by 3", made from a food storage container, and wallpapered with the wrapping paper I teased them with last year.

It comes with many useful features.  For example, it plays music:

If you get tired of the audio, you can watch the pretty lights instead:

Did you catch that message?  That is OK, it is just a taunt.  It seems likely that I will get further with the information on the DVD.  You saw that eject button, right?

Too bad the information under the help function is so thin!

Serious kudos to Jeremy for assembling this from scrap electronics.  He had to use imagination and perseverance to mount the components in a non-standard platform, not to mention designing the electronics and program!

Michael

Presepe...pronto!

Last weekend, I finally put together the presepe! We have moved its location to the upper landing, since our downstairs neighbors (who come intermittently and unpredictably) complained vociferously last year about our having co-opted all the space for our uses (fair enough!).

Leaving our front door

The shepherd and sheep in the hills!

The cave all ready for Mary and Joseph

Villagers

Joseph, Mary, and donkey: "Are we almost there??"

A little further to go!

But there's a musician to help you on the way...

Love,

Alexandra

Winterland Progress

Things in the Piazza are just moving along beautifully! We now have a garden (complete with grass!), a little bridge over what looks like a planned pond, a skating rink with some ice, and more!

The covered bridge has a painting of Consolazione

The rink goes around the Christmas tree!

Life-sized figures for the world's biggest presepe...all the way from Viterbo!

Seeing these drive up the main road cracks me up

For moving mulch. And trees.

Love,

Alexandra

Winter Wonderland, version 2.0.17

There are fabulous things afoot in the Piazza this year for Christmas! The lights are already up throughout town, pending illumination on December 8 (the feast of the Immaculate Conception). However, the new activist group, LOOP, has even more elaborate plans than last year's ice rink. Rumor has it that this year will have an ice skating loop, with an internal garden and a bridge. So far, there are admittedly no signs of an ice rink, so that may be erroneous.

However, garden, there will certainly be!

They have brought in enormous trunk sections, rocks, greenery, and intriguing scaffolding. Here's how it's shaping so far:

Will keep you posted as it progresses!

Love,

Alexandra

First Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all our American readers!

We generally don't celebrate this holiday because our family tradition is to go to Michael's parents...which is rather a commute from Italy! A few years ago, Jim and Sharon were here for Thanksgiving, so we did the traditional spread (thanks to Sharon, who by now is an expert!), but that was the only time.

This year was a different story. Although Michael was traveling, we were going to have a guest! Trey, son of my dear friend Tricia, is studying this semester in Rome; he came to spend the night with us prior to getting ready for his final exams.

As always, it was a treat to see him; he's visited us several times now, and swears that it only ever rains in Todi. Given his experience, it's a fair comment, so I was delighted that we had great weather today!

In any case, I'd decided to cook a more traditional meal rather than just an "everyday" dinner. When Ashley and I went to the States in early November, I brought back (legally! I checked) a few bags of cranberries for the cranberry sauce. I bought the pumpkins last week, cooked them up, and Ashley and I made the pie last night.

Foreground:colorflower (brighter than in the photo because of steam).
The green in the background is Umbrian mashed potatoes: cooked with greens!

Umbrian mash plus the stuffing

The pink is where I added lemon-juice; it turned fluorescent!

 Since a turkey is a little large for our oven (and is difficult to get this time of year, since they're being fattened for Christmas), I punked out and decided to do roast chicken pieces. Stuffing, gravy, salad, and potatoes were done today. We also had a new-to-me vegetable: purple cauliflower, dubbed "colorflower" by James! It's the most marvelous stuff: it starts this delightful lilac/magenta, then as it cooks moves through amethyst and into indigo. However, the steaming water turns a beautiful turquoise or emerald green, depending.



As we sat down, I realized that this is my first time ever cooking a Thanksgiving meal! Thanks to Sharon's example over the years, though, I knew what to do and won the highest praise: completely silent chewing punctuated only by "mmmm" for several minutes!

Grand finale!

After dinner, we played sjoelbak (a Dutch bar game) and the kids played with the Spirographs. And then pie! I was pleased with how the color turned out, because it still had a good bit of yellow to it rather than its turning brown. I whipped the cream with brown sugar, which gave a nice complex flavor that worked well with the pie.

All in all a success! And the best thing? Having my sweet kids (a portion of them, anyway!) with me and getting to see Trey.

With thanks for all our blessings,

Alexandra

Smoking pot

While I don't fry often, a copious amount of olive oil disappears from my kitchen on a weekly basis. The ubiquitous non-stick coating does not do well with oil at high temperatures, and nor does standard stainless. I decided it was time for a new pan, and had a heavy-duty metal pot with an enamel lining in mind...like Le Creuset or something similar.

I looked at the market, but the best I could find was a flimsy thing that just didn't seem right.

This week, I finally got to our local kitchen goods shop (Michael doesn't usually allow me to enter, because it is a complete gimme store; I want EVERYTHING they sell, please!) and spent some time looking at their offerings. They had a nice-quality non-stick pan and lovely heavy-gauge metal pans, but not what I was seeking.

True confession time: my Italian was not up to asking them for the type of pot I was looking for. In fact, I forgot some of the basic words I did know in the heat of the moment. I stumbled around, talked about "ceramic" instead of enamel, and was generally just pathetic. Luckily, they know and love me as a customer who pays them a month's rent every time I go in there, so they took me back to the pots and pans section again. I explained everything. I looked pleadingly.

Aha! She had exactly the solution I was craving. She ferretted around in the shelves, pulled out a cardboard box, and...it was a flattish crock. You know, cooked clay with red glaze internally, brown glaze externally, to be put in the back of the fireplace. The dimensions were great, but duh, this is not an item you put on the stove.

I explained the problem. She looked "duh-ishly" right back at me and virtually patted me on the head, while telling me that all Italians use this cookware, it goes right on the stove no problem (not fridge to oven, however, but it can be used in the oven without a problem). I stuttered something about thermal shock and direct heat and she looked at me very kindly and told me to can it and the she knew what she was talking about.

What could I do? I whipped out my credit card, and brought it home. The instructions said to soak it for 12 hours before using the first time, so I took care of that part right away. I'm using it tonight for my greens, but true confession: after all the explosions I've had in my kitchen over the years, I'm staying well away until I trust this thing.

Love,

Alexandra