Hello from Lincoln, Nebraska!! This will be my last post. Wanted to let my fellow travelers know that the HEAVY wooden molds from the Harrachov glass factory made it home. Mom and I made it through customs and ran to our gate in Atlanta only to find out that rain had caused a delay......which continued through the evening. We were supposed to get home at 8:30pm and finally landed in Omaha at 12:30am....without bags! We are home and rested now. Thanks for following along. Hope you enjoyed the blog!

St. Vitus's Cathedral in the Prague Castle area.

This pic was taken on Charles Bridge. You have to see this bridge and walk over it to see its magnitude and enjoy the multiple statues. It was built in 1357 and replaced in 1741.

Officials getting ready for the pope's visit in the Prague Castle area.

Astronomical clock in Old Town Hall Tower. The tower was added to the house in 1364.

Spend a great day in Prague last Friday. We are in the Wenceslas Square. This is a bronze equestrian statue of St. Wenceslas with the National Museum behind it.

Helena, Jana's colleague, gives her a hug at Milan's dinner party. Jana (pronounced "yanna") has been a fabulous guide. She has an amazing mind for facts, dates, names, places, lovers, kings, queens, their children, political parties, etc!!! She has lived under several government parties and will share what life was like under each "rulership" when asked. We are so thankful for her knowledge and quick humor! THANK YOU, JANA! To the rest of you Czechs .... I have her business card for your future travels! (and she will do private tours too!)

Look what mom found! She found this in a "Czech quick shop" in a small village outside of Prague!

Deli slice consisted of  chicken, sausage and ham!

This is what is left of the foundation of a couple of homes in Lidice. The whole village was destroyed on June 10, 1942 after Reinhardt Heydrich was assassinated. Nearly 500 people and 102 homes were annihilated. The men were shot, the women taken to a concentration camp and killed. The children were also slaughtered. The homes were burned and bombed (lots of stone) and then plowed under so no part of the community was visible. 

Bronze monument of the 88 Lidice's children that were slaughtered. The artist used pictures from the past to recreate what they looked like at the time of their death.

"Fred & Ginger" building in Prague!

Tim, this is a "playmobile" castle dream. The castle's gradual building took place around 1300 to the early 14th century!

St Vitus Church in the town of Ceske Krumlov. Dates back to the 1st half of the 14th century.

View from castle in Cesky Krumlov.

Hotel we stayed in on Tuesday....Grandhotel Zvon in Ceske Budejovice. It was very old but very cool! It was located right on the town square.

Milan and Jana having dinner at the Budweiser - Budvar! More about these two special people later. We all appreciate their talents very much!

Dinner at the Budweiser - Budvar!

Dinner at the Budweiser - Budvar!

Dinner at the Budweiser - Budvar!

Dinner at the Budweiser - Budvar!

Telc Castle, once a medieval fortress. Dates back to the middle of the 16th century.

Town square where the Telc Castle stands. 

John, you would be amazed at all of the wood piles the Czechs have ready for the winter. Mike, my cousin, is posing here with one. Mike is especially liking the way the wood is stacked on the ends. He is over 6 feet tall!

Another ancestor lived here. Some people were afraid to get out of the bus because of an "out of body" experience by one of the tourists a few years ago in front of this house.

Bernice and Lynn order salads and pivo for lunch. The beer is usually cheaper than water or cokes.

More food pics for Rene ... Mom ordered this at lunch time...Grilled breast with peaches and cheese. 

Kent throwing another gutter ball?

This is the band that played for us at he Budweiser-Budvar brewery.

This is for Carol R....bowling! Strings line up the pins like marionettes.

Adolph & Erma dancing the polka at the Budweiser

Budvar Brewery. 

The hotel we are at has a bowling alley with strings attached to the top of the pins to stand them back up. They looked like marionettes. I took a video...but don't have time to try that out on this blog. Jenny really wants Carol to see this! I might try to post this another time.

Marcella, Kent and Mark's mom, with my aunt Bernice are watching someone swim. Dolores and Jenny walking  through the maze of a hotel. This place has long hallways with twists and turns .... we think if there was a fire we would never escape. 

We are in the village of Jamolice, Moravia. Mom is trying her Czech out and asking about the Maly family.  The sign on the door outside of this establishment said,  "Hospoda" The way it is pronounced sounded like "hospital"...I told mom after we left, "It sure looked like a beer joint to me! Hospoda means public place or tavern!

This is the village that my dad's father came from. John Maly Jr. was born here in 1865. This is Edward Maly's father. (Hey Bobbi, two of their kids married a Rezac...Joseph Rezac from Brainard and Mary Francis Rezac from Weston)

This is an open air museum, sort of like Williamsburg, VA where people are dressed in traditional clothes. We saw a working saw mill, flour mill, hammer mill and an oil press. The part that was impressive is that they still work! They demonstrated how they used water to run the mills. The oil press was dated back to the 1600's!

Emil Zatopek is buried near the church in this Wallachian open-air museum. He was an olympic long distance runner. He was a gold medalist in 1948 and 1952. I had never heard of him but Mike and Jenny had extensive knowledge about him....the runners!

This is Emil Zatopek's wife. She was a javelin thrower in the Olympics. She and other Olympians came to pay their respects to her husband. She happens to be born on the same date and year as her husband. 9-19-1922.

Ski resort restaurant on top of the mountain. Built in 1898. 

Tonight we rode this ski lift down to a restaurant in a ski resort area. Mom survived. It was fine getting on but then she got worried about the exit procedure from the lift. She did fine!

Jana, our guide, leads the way when finding where our ancestors used to live. She usually has to talk to the people in Czech first before we invade the property.

House Hunting! This is something we did a few days ago. We went on a hunt to find Anna Elizabeth Lorentz home..born 1771 in Maly Lanov. We unloaded the bus and went through fields to find the house that had been changed from #2 to #124. 

Hotel Eroplan in Roznov pod Radhostem. This is the hotel we are now located. (The wild and crazy Czech guy in the purple outfit owns it. He was telling us it is in the form of an airplane but none of us can figure that one out. He was fun to talk to!

Okay everyone, my sister has requested that I put more food pictures on the blog. She wants to compare how our countries eat. I just included several pictures that I have taken throughout the trip. The above dish I did not eat....It was the day we had to pick from the dill sauce with meat or this stuffed beef. I think I made a good choice as it surely looks like it is stuffed with a hot dog!

Tonight's dessert....crepes with a berry sauce. We think the berries were blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and maybe currants.  I didn't take a pic of the main dish, it wasa  chicken roll with spinach and lots of boiled potatoes. We also had broccoli soup before dinner. It was pureed. 

Look closely! David ordered this steak that is surrounded by a blueberry sauce. It looked delicious and he stated that to be the case. He said he has had this similar dish in California.

What is amazing about this dish is that we were in a tourist area, sort of a shack with benches, but the food was fabulous....no burger, hot dogs and sodas like American tourist places. I had a "salad with chicken lumps". It too was good. It contained braised chicken, orange/yellow peppers, cucumbers, zucchini and carrots. Sorry, Rene, no picture....but it was your kind of food!

This is one serving of dessert. It is actually a kolache pizza. One was prune and one was poppy seed. Mom had a poppy seed one and one with cream cheese with lemon.

Chicken cordon blue. Notice the potatoes! We get lots of them! :)

This is a chicken salad. Mom could figure out via the menu that this would be a chicken salad with cornflakes. She worried a bit after ordering that maybe we ordered a chicken pasta salad but we were pleasantly surprised. The chicken was fried in cornflakes. It was good!

Finally, we had cabbage soup! Harley, one of our Schultz cousins, has been searching for this soup all week. To me, it tasted much like sauerkraut with a thin gravy type broth, including whipped cream on top. Sounds gross, but it is really good!

WILD & CRAZY KIND OF GUY! Okay, this picture just doesn't do it justice. The shirt, pants and shoes are PURPLE! He is the owner of the hotel/restaurant where we are staying. He talks just like the Czechs on Saturday Night Live. He spoke to us in Czech and English. We are now in Roznov pod Radhostem in Hotel Eroplan.