The majority of our visit in Prague was spent looking for Porcelain Dolls. I had read many online reports about their being dolls in Prague, and there were, but there was one small problem. THEY ARE MADE IN CHINA. Only SOME of the dolls have Czech made clothes, but the porcelain bodies and the painted faces are both from China. I was so mad! As a last resort I mentioned to Brian that I wanted to see Karlstejn, a small city 45 minutes outside of Prague purported to have handmade Czech dolls. But because we are crazy, we decided to leave this excursion for the last day of our trip in Prague. You know, before we had to catch a train at 4:40pm to Berlin. And what time did we leave for Karlstejn? 12:10. Yeah, good call. We didn't even know how to get there, where we were going, or how we would get a train back. We just hopped on the train like it was no big deal.
We got to Karlstejn and boy was it hot. Not as hot as Rome was, but still rather uncomfortable. There was this Taxi driver there who said the walk to the Castle was 45 minutes, and we figured we didn't have that time, so we wanted to take a cab. He said 100 crowns, so we got in and as he's handing us the seat belt he says, "Ok, 400 crowns." We were like what, you said 100 crowns? Apparently, it's only 100 crowns per person if the Van is full. So we yelled at him and got out, and he tried to run us down with his van. Ok so not really, but he tried to get us to come back and we told him to shove off. 45 minutes...what a joke. It was a 15 minute walk at best. Yes, we were hot and sweaty, but it didn't cost us an arm and a leg. And we didn't have to be near that crook.
So what do you think happened when we got to Karlstejn? No Czech Porcelain dolls. Just plastic porcelain dolls. So we bought some of those, because at this point I'm thinking, this Czech porcelain doll thing is a myth. Countless people on the internet have lied to me. So, disappointed, hot and grumpy, I headed back to the train station while Brian shopped around some more.
And lo and behold, what should my knight in shining armor come back with, but REAL Czech porcelain dolls. Hot, sweating, and looking like NOT a million bucks, Brian arrived with not one but TWO dolls. Brian would like me to add that he was near death. He said he couldn't decide which one to get me, so he got both. I was so happy, and the dolls are so beautiful. Apparently he found them on the other side of Karlstejn and then ran like he was on the track team to get back to me. It was a good thing he did too, since it was 2:20, and we needed to get back to our hotel room to get our luggage before taking the tram to the station.
Speaking of that, what a disaster. We got to the train station at 4:10, bought some Burger King for lunch (YUCK), and then looked at the departure board for our train to see what gate it was at. I'm sure you can guess what happened next. Our train was not listed. And why? Because we were at the wrong train station. Lord how the train station lady laughed at us. We had 20 minutes to take the metro 3 stops, and then find our gate at the other station. Running to get to our destination like that scene out of Home Alone (minus losing a child), we somehow managed to arrive with 2 minutes to spare. And, as it turned out, that didn't matter. The train was 20 minutes late anyway. SIGH. Such was our overall stay in Prague, full of beauty, magic, and a little inconvenience.
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