It's our last night in Prague. We leave at 4 a.m. for the airport and the 24 hours of travel to get back home. I'm mixed. I really miss the kids. I really love this place. And I've had an incredible time getting to know James again. This morning, I ventured out by myself for a couple of hours. I did pretty good - if I talk sparingly, I can fake it pretty well. And I only had to pull out the map a couple of times. I even helped some people navigate the ticket machines for the metro.

This whole trip has been all sorts of weird "right place, right time" moments. I need to write them all down so I don't forget all of this. New Year's was a great example. We didn't really have plans. Most of the restaurants and clubs closed down for private parties (which were so expensive and would require us to be tied down to one area). James' friends invited us to have a couple of beers with them early. We couldn't find a bar so we went back to their place and had beer and Becherovka (spiced liquor). We just all hung out until 10 or so. (They even offered up their place if we wanted to come back some summer while they're in D.C.) We left their place (with beer to go) and decided to brave some of the major areas (Wencheles Square, Old Town Square). It was insane. There were tons of fireworks - generally small ones that people were throwing at the crowd - but everyone was happy. Seriously, no fights...lots of drunk loud Germans and drunk loud Czechs and just loud Italians. We made it to Old Town Square in time to see the main fireworks (and have kielbasa in baguette). We wandered home and just watched everyone having fun.

This afternoon, we were trying to find food and thought we found a nice little local place. The service was horrible. We had coffee and beer and just left (well James attempted to talk to them but it got loud and no one could seem to agree on what language to argue in...very very odd). He felt bad that we had ordered and just left. But we jumped on a tram and went to the first office he had when he was here. It wasn't the greatest neighborhood but he was happy to be nostalgic. While walking around, he noticed a restaurant that he used to frequent (that happened to be open on New Years). We had some awesome food and beer and it was so wonderful. Then we started heading back. Traffic was horrible. We couldn't even get on a metro train. So we decided to go the opposite way for a couple of stops. When we came back through, herds of people starting getting on the metro. When we reached our stop (Malostranska), they all piled out. We decided to follow them and found a perfect view of the Prague city fireworks - possibly the best fireworks I've ever seen. We were within walking distance of our hotel and we wandered back holding hands and just talking.

So we leave at 4 a.m. and head to Frankfurt. And our bags are so freaking heavy because Bavarian crystal is freaking heavy. And I probably didn't think of everyone when souvenir shopping but I did find some cool things and I can blow the rest of our Euro's on chocolate in the Frankfurt airport.

We're thinking of coming back with the family during the summer of 2009. It's that amazing (and frankly, we missed alot of the "must see" tourist destinations while we were rambling around Praha 3 looking for that special strudl shop!)