We arrived in Dresden about 50 minutes late.   A dour chap from London told us to expect that the train would be late … they’re always late.    He was a glass half empty fellow.

The train runs along the Elbe River all the way from Prague to Dresden. It was swollen but not quite flooding. It did totally flood the Dresden train station about 10 years ago ... shutting everything down of course.

The train ride was great.  Very smooth and quiet.   These are electric trains like Noah’s train set, unlike the diesel engines in the US.  (AmTrak)

We got to our hotel which is only 500 meters from the Congress Center, where the Passiv Haus conference starts tomorrow.

Entrance to the Zwinger Museum and Theater. Compare to the Wikipedia Photos

We walked in to town and were surprised at a couple of things:

1.  All the old buildings that were not destroyed.   We had heard of the firebombing of Dresden as the final straw to break Nazi resistance in WWII, kind of like the German Hiroshima.   But there were tons of 100-500 year old buildings.   Later we found that a lot of restoration was done to rebuild the “old” buildings to look as they had for hundreds of years.

Fountain at a nicer hotel than we are staying at. You'll have to ask Luelle. She collected a brochure for you.

2. The growth and new construction is going like gangbusters.  No recession evident here.   We have never seen so many construction cranes building big projects since we were in Beijing, right before the Olympics.

No Recession Here!

The "Max" was our best restaurant so far ... but we're still looking.

Then we found the best restaurant of our trip so far. At least Dave thought so, because we had an upper floor window seat looking out at 5 construction cranes working away, lifting things into place until 9 o’clock at night.  Romantic?  Well…..

Check out this Wikipedia Link to the Zwinger Museum.  Note the photos on the right,  before and after.   An interesting factoid is that if the  officer portrayed in the recent Tom Cruise movie Valkerie had been an engineer instead of a politician, the Dresden bombing would never have happened because the assassination attempt on Hitler by his conscientious officers would have succeeded … rent the movie.

Scaffolding and workmen restoring old buildings is a common sight everywhere we’ve been in Europe.    In America all our buildings are young, under 200 years, mostly under 100 and a lot under 50 years of age.

Close Up of the photo at left. What do you think the guy on the top scaffold is thinking? He seems a little outside the OSHA requirements

These would all be considered youngsters in Europe, where 300 to 1000 year is the more usual age.

This restoration project, seen in the Jewish Quarter from our room in the Intercontinental Hotel in Prague (Praha) is between 300 & 400 years old.   The workers seem well secured with scaffolding and OSHA like safety equipment.

Entrepeneurs and Marketers have seized the opportunity and almost all of the large scaffolding works have these advertising multi-purpose protective drapes. Here BMW is taking advantage of the view

Maintaining the history is a serious challenge in all of Europe.   Many buildings from Cathedrals to Museums and others all charge admission to help defray the cost of maintenance.   Large projects like bridges and monuments are handled by the government,  part of the reason for the higher taxes in older Europe compared to the youngster, America.

Prague is too big and has too much to offer to do it justice in 3 days.  Last time Luelle mentioned that the first thing we do in a new place is figure out the money.   How many of these for how many of those.  It is complicated a little bit by needing to have 3 currencies, Czech Crowns,  Euros, & US Dollars.   Haven’t used any Euros and Dollars only for tips.

The Czech Republic seems very proud of their culture and history and wants to use their own money, even after joining EU a few years ago. The next thing we do is figure out the transportation. In the big cities that means the “Metro” or “Tube” or “Underground” … Different cities have different names for it, but it’s basically the Subway.   The Prague Metro is very good and easy enough to understand for a first timer.    We also found a fair amount of English being understood, especially if they are selling something.   But for common speaking it is 100% Czech.

One “must see” in Prague is a walk across the Charles Bridge. It has about two dozen statues along each side of the bridge.   Mostly saints and warriors and Jesus and Mary.    We’re finding that there has been a lot of killing and intrigue in Bohemia over the centuries,  and a lot of it was over which way you believed in Jesus and Mary!

The river has a weir across it,  I think to keep the water level up.   There is a small channel going around the dam that the small boats use to go up and downstream.   see photo.

So far our favorite things to eat have been the ghoulasch and some gnochi that we had while exploring today.

We like tours to get a good flavor of a new area but we didn’t get around to it this time.   No doubt we missed some things by striking out on our own, but we also encountered some things that we would have missed if we had been on a tour.   Either way you choose to go, Prague can keep you busy for a week.

This Bohemian Knight was guarding the bridge. So we felt very safe!

We couldn't stay for the concert, but thought the blue jeans were and interesting touch of "Westernization" and relaxing of European propriety.

Until I started selling River Cruises, I had no notion of wanting to visit Prague.  Would have been hard pressed to tell you exactly where it was. But more and more people have been wanting to add it on to their River Cruise, that my interest grew.  As we planned our current trip, which is also including a Passiv Haus Energy Conference for my husband in Dresden Germany, I found that Prague and Dresden were quite close to each other.  So Prague became our first stop on this journey.

What struck me first is how clean it is — especially the older buildings.  I am sure it is rennovations that they have had to make, but it is beautiful. Building after Building, hundreds of years old without the years of grime or grafitti on them.

The first thing when we come to a new country is to try to figure out how their money works.

When we got to the airport, I got $200 US Dollars worth of CZ and $200 US Dollars worth of money to use in Hungary.  For CZ I was able to get 1930 CZ per $100 so it is 20 for $1.

I have to keep converting it in my mind.  The taxi ride from the airport was posted as 492 CZ, and when I gave the taxi driver 1000 CZ I only got back 400.  So somehow it went from 492 to 600, but he spoke no English so I couldn’t ask him.  600 = $30.  Not bad for a taxi drive that took at least 30 minutes.

We are actually staying in the Jewish Quarter, not far from the River.  We just returned from dinner at midnight, and the streets are well-lighted and feel very safe.

There are so many twists and turns though, we did get lost coming back to the hotel.  We were able to find where we had been last night in Wenceslas Square and were able to retrace our steps from there.

For lunch today we went to a typical Czech cafe.  Dave had Goulash with dumplings.  They brought it as  big round bread (dumplings) on a plate, and then a dark gravy with hunks of meat (Dave thinks it was venison) in a metal container with a fondue candle underneath it to keep it warm.

Czech Dumplings. When I asked one Czech person what is famous Czech cousine, he said, "Oh dumplings, of course." I would have to say, they are pretty good.

They had many Greek dishes and I had chicken gyro with a good Greek Yogurt.  I am seeing more and more on TV at home about Greek Yogurt, and how good it is for you.  This is the first time I have had it, along with on the plane on the way over when they served it for breakfast with fruit — much healthier than our processed yogurt.

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Dave has been working on his webinar which he has to do at 3am this morning.  He does it every Tuesday night at 6pm PST — so that means 3am in Prague.  I have just been walking around the hotel area and Wenceslas Square, but tomorrow we plan to take an organized tour so we will have a guide to tell us what we are looking at.
As we have tried to engage the waiters in conversation, they do not really understand what we are asking.  So they know how to communicate with the customers regarding the meals they are ordering, but don’t fluently communicate in English.  The same with the staff at the front desk.  Dave asked them for a restaurant, since we were going at 10:30pm.  After listening to him, as we started out the door, I asked Dave what he said — “I don’t know” was his answer.  So I guess it goes both ways.
There is a group here from AMA Waterways, spending a few Pre-days of their Pre-cruise for their river cruise.

I (Luelle) found this on my walking tour today. Tomorrow, we'll go check it out. I would say Prague definitely has plenty to keep a tourist busy for 3 or 4 days at the beginning or end of a River Cruise.

One of the main reasons I wanted to visit Prague was to find out if I would recommend it to my clients, and if so — should they only do it as a pre-event of their cruise — or is it easily done on their own — and how do they get to the ship from here?  Flying in is a piece of cake, but our next adventure is the railroad to Dresden, and then for Dave to take the RR to Passau, while I am doing the ordinary and flying to Munich to have Uniworld pick me up and take me to the ship in Passau.

BTW:  Most of these photos are taken with Dave’s camera and  the resolution is huge.    That means that there’s a lot more picture than it looks like and if you want to see more detail … just click on the photo.   If it hasn’t been compressed it will expand for you.

We set out from our hotel in what looked like an interesting direction.  Within two blocks the tree lined street opened up into world famous Wenceslas Square.  I guess there are benefits being married to a travel agent!   It was just at dusk so I went on full alert in my role of protecting her from pirates! and after checking out the square and some side streets, we settled on an open air cafe.  I was drawn to the flame of the propane heaters that reminds me of my campfire every Wednesday with Chuck.  Tell me you cant see the resemblance!

Cool Propane Heater on Wenceslas Square

My other source of heat and light. It's been Chuck's and my venue for solving the world's problems weekly for the last 10 years. I'm going to miss this but I think I have a canoe partner in Virginia. ... Steve? Anyone? Is anyone out there ... who thinks that canoing at night is normal??? ... Never was impressed with that "normal" stuff anyway...

Luelle had one of her favorites in Europe that just doesn’t seem to be the same in the States: Tomato and Mozarella Salad with Basil.  I had trout because the waiter said that they came from just up there, and pointed to the mountains.  We’ve got 3 days.

Maybe I’ll chase that  down. By the way, have you noticed that European Ice Cream tastes better?  Or is it that Ice Cream tastes better in Europe?

This is the Astronomical Clock that is so famous. There are supposed to be little characters that come out and perform on the hour. Maybe 11 pm was after working hours or maybe the little creatures were on strike.

Goodbye San Francisco. From here we go up over Canada, pass over Greenland and Iceland. The pilot says no worries about the ash. The volcano has calmed down and we are too high for it anyway. He said it with an air of surety. So here we go....

Two Story Airplanes are usually reserved for "over the ocean" type of flights. We sat and watched this United B 757 for too long before checking in at Lufthansa only to find that they had given our First Class Seats away!. We like to fly First Class when going overseas. It gets you there more rested and you dont waste a day recovering. Paying bills with Credit Cards and accumulating Flyer miles has been a blessing for many years. The Lufthansa staff jumped thru hoops and got our seats back ... moved us upstairs ... the first time we've been upstairs on a 757.

Considering our recent luck with delayed flights, grounded planes and lost luggage, this flight rates a 10.  Non of that … everything went well.   So here we are in Prague.   We just went out to eat dinner and found the famous square and had a nice dinner.   It’s fun figuring out the value of the local currency.

Luelle with her iPad and favorite travel pillow. These things are more important on the longer trips. This will be her first time without bringing a lot of paperbacks to read. We'll let you know how the ipad does.

We're going REALLY fast!. The clouds are going by faster than usual. The ground speed indicator shows we are going almost 700 miles per hour. Without a tailwind, this aircraft goes only a little over 500. Yahoo for tailwinds, we'll get there a little sooner.

Tomorrow TravelBabe will go and get all of those details for you.   I’m finishing up my Tuesday Webinar and we’ll see how well it will work broadcasting from the Czech Republic.

Luelle cashing in some Euros for the local currency.

Landing in Prague ... Pretty sure this is Safflower. Maybe someone who knows could correct me?

As you can see, the portion of the Danube that we'll see on this cruise is less than half of its navigabble length. We'll catch other parts of it on future trips.

Here’s the map showing the parts of Europe that we’ll be visiting on this trip.  We’ll start in Prague  (Praha on the map).  Then we’ll go to Dresden where I (Dave) will attend the International PassivHaus conference.  What in the world will Luelle do by herself??  Stay tuned, I dont think she’ll have any problems.  She was talking about taking the train to Berlin…  After the conference, we go to Passau and board the River Beatrice.  It’s the newest and best ship in the Uniworld fleet.  We journey a fair distance each day till we get to Budapest, the end of our river cruise. We’ll wrap up with a week in Switzerland.

BTW the best downloadable map I’ve found is this one from Eurail.   It’s about 3MB but that means you can zoom in a long ways and not lose quality.   Download it HERE

Have you ever left on a trip and never forgotten anything?   We haven’t.   At least some little something that, “We’ll bring next time” … Actually the bigger question is, “Have you ever packed too much and arrived back home having never used some things?” … But that’s a topic for another post.

Travel Tip #1  (Learned in the School of Hard Knocks when Luelle’s passport and all our money were stolen by a pickpocket in Barcelona).  That time Heather had to scramble and fax copies to Spain.

Now what we do is have scanned copies of our passports sent to ourselves by email.   These could be in passworded documents if you are worried about security of your email.  Then if we needed them, we could log on from any computer in the world and download a copy.  The same thing could be done with Drivers Licenses and Credit Cards.  Those should be passworded for sure.  We also keep several paper copies in different parts of our luggage for additional redundancy

It always seems to happen as we get ready to get out of town.  The Mad Scramble.   We haven’t sold any property for months.  Now we are selling 2 and leasing one in California and buying one in Virginia, all going on while we’re in Europe … Ugh!    But it’s a blessing to have a great team to work with and a blessing to be living in this digital age.  We expect that all will go smoothly enough.  I’ll continue to do my webinars and even though I’m encouraging Luelle to take a break, I’m sure she’ll sell some River Cruises from her River Cruise!  What a country!   I guess it’s not work if you love it!

So we need your help!   What are your favorite things to not forget?  Maybe your favorite travel tip?  Add it in the comments and We’ll publish a complete list later.   We’ve already got Heather to take in the mail and feed Tsunami.  Thanks kiddo…

Next Post, I’ll share our itinerary and a map.  Our goal in writing this blog is to bring as much value as we can to our friends and those considering a River Cruise.  We’re committing to writing every day and including photos and video.  You’ve seen Rick Steves and Samantha Brown, the professionals.  This blog will be more the unofficial version.  We’ll be your “embedded reporters” boots on the ground, up close and personal, and do our best to tell it how it really is…

Thanks for reading,

Luelle & Dave Robinson  aka Travel-Babe  & her Protector from Pirates.

(I may get in trouble for calling her that but I think it has a certain ring to it.   What do you think?)

On the last day of our cruise on the Columbia River, we went on past the confluence of the Willamette and the Columbia, the rest of the way to the Pacific Ocean and the port of Astoria.  Here are some pictures.

Lewis and Clark wintered here in 1805-1806. After surveying the options, they chose this location to build Fort Clatsop. They didn't ask the Indians for the land or the trees, but after staying here for 3 1/2 months, they did give the fort to the Indians. This photo depicts the trading that went on between them. Trading with Europeans was nothing new to these Indians. One chief met them wearing a complete British Army Officers Uniform that he had traded for.

Sacajawea was the young Indian bride of the French Canadian, Toussaint Charbonneau, Charbonneau was a good guide but the pair was chosen because of Sacajawea's ability to speak the Shoshone Indian Language. (she had been kidnapped from them as a child) Her son Jean Baptiste was born on the trail and celebrated his first birthday at Fort Clatsop.

Miltary Flag Raising at Fort Clatsop. The flag had 15 stars in 1805. (the two past 13 were Vermont and Kentucky) It stayed at 15 stars until 1818 and thereafter on each July 4th a new flag was issued if a new state had joined the Union in the previous year. ... The things you learn on trips like this ... this will stand us in good stead in a trivia game in our future! The soldier is wearing real deer skin pants and shirt. He mentioned that they hadn't been washed in 4 years!

What William Clark may have looked like writing in his journal in Fort Clatsop

The Pilings remain after the last Salmon Cannery was removed. Only small niche canneries remain today. The Spirit of 98 is in the background.

Seagulls, Herons & Cormorants were the prevalent shore birds.