Another filled day! But the exhibit is now ready (which is a good thing as we can't work on it during the day tomorrow (the museum that is housing the National and Student Exhibits is also a regular museum also housing the state collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, and crazily enough they want to be OPEN for tourists without hammering. nailing and welding going on constantly).
Here are my Prague-lings: Yu Shibagaki, Collin Ranney and Rachelle Beckerman, the three students who have been helping put this thing together for the past two years. I'm incredibly proud of how hard we've worked, and what it's come together to be. There is also a sense of relief... no bones about THAT.
The big news onsite today was that the remaining HALF of the Phillipines National exhibit finally arrived... it had been held up in customs for the past two weeks.
The National exhibits can get really big and intricate. Once everything is open, I'll send pix of my favorites of the National and Student Exhibits... I already know the Belgian Student exhibit is going to be a favorite... just think LARGE CLAMSHELLS... I'll leave it at that for now.
After we futzed and fiddled with the exhibit, I headed out to explore again. I walked a couple blocks north to the CZECH INDUSTRIAL PALACE...
... which is where many PQ's past have been held. We couldn't this time, as there was a devastating fire that leveled the entire right-hand flank of the building about two year ago. It has yet to be repaired... and for some reason is housing a tattoo convention as we speak....
After that, I headed back deeper into the Old Jewish Quarter. It was late enough in the day that I didn't go into the museums and things I wanted (I'd have had to hurry thru), but it was still really cool to walk thru the area.
There are several synagogues thru this area, and although I couldn't get a good pic of the REALLY old one, this is the largest...
and this is the gate to the Old Jewish Cemetery...
after to checking to see if the Museum of Decorative Arts was still open.. it was but only for 15 more minutes.. I headed across the Manesuv Bridge, looking south to the Charles bridge... shown here)
and walked thru the river-side part of the Mala Strana district, doing some window shopping, before curving up onto the Charles Bridge and heading back into Old Town/Stare Mesto.
you can see my shadow in the bottom of that picture!
I'll get better pictures of the Charles Bridge tomorrow... it's really quite stunning.. it's really wide and is typically lined with artists selling their wares... I was late enough in the day that many had already packed it in... though there was one watercolorist I hope is there again tomorrow....
the day ended with a VERY late meal... like we finally got served at 11pm-late.... but it was my first real taste of traditional Czech cuisine... the meal was hosted by USITT (the organizers of the American exhibits here) as a "thank-you" and "thank God that we've got the exhibits up, finally" fete at Strelecky Ostrov, a restaurant which is on one of the bigger islands in the Vltava River. Pilsner Urquell (the local basic Czech beer) flowed like wine (which also flowed) --- and side note here... what they say really is true... at times, and places, here in Prague, beer IS cheaper than water --- and we all ate!
I had Svickova, which is a braised beef sirloin in a pepper-cream-white wine sauce with cranberry compote and served with a side of Potato Dumplings... it was quite good... very good in fact.... kinda wish I had more with me as I'm typing this. As we started to leave (and the younger kids went out bar-hopping and searching for the drag bars in town). I caught sight of the National Theatre across the river lit up...
it was a lovely end to a lovely long day... ready for some rest and a whole lotta sight-seeing and museum-going tomorrow, followed by the PQ opening gala tomorrow night!
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