We arrived in Prague yesterday, a shiny May Sunday that just happened to be Beer Fest and the Czech/Russia ice-hockey final. The city was alive with every sort of pedestrian one can imagine. And we — we were in a rental car. We had gotten lost in the Bohemian countryside on the way up, and now we were at risk of driving through a pedestrian zone. But after much clever driving by Tom and jockeying with trams (which share lanes with cars here), we were able to find a temporary parking space, our hostel and, eventually, a parking spot in a garage which I sincerely hope we will find again.

And then we learned about the big game, which was beamed into the huge town square, which is in shouting distance from where we were trying to sleep. But never mind. This is traveling, in which the unexpected is supposed to happen. Like our road from Vienna to Prague, which inexplicably ended about 20 miles past the Czech border. Had we not gotten lost, we wouldn’t have seen this castle on a hill, which appeared out of nowhere. Not as grand as the Prague Castle we saw today, but because it rose from the landscape like a vision, all the sweeter.