Today was one of those lovely days, a day that says everything about why I continually return to European cities for vacation. It featured several of my favorite things: including but not limited to chocolate, books, classical music, photography…. Not to mention good food and a slow, at my leisure, at my whim, exploration of new things.

It started with my visit to Choco Cafe, a place I’d seen Saturday on my private tour with Dana. My gosh, the cafe goes all out for chocolate! It has a menu that lets you choose the origin of the cocoa beans used to make your hot chocolate. A big fan but never claiming to be a connoisseur, I went with dark chocolate (as opposed to milk, or white; isn’t white milk? See, not a connoisseur) topped with sea salt and whipped crème. But the menu literally had two pages devoted to various locations the beans were sourced from. I also ordered original Horice Rolls (described as original cinnamon rolls with whipped cream and chocolate). While delicious, they were not what I expected (more of a crepe); clearly the warm up act and not the main event, lol.

Next it was books. I waited in line to see the Idiom, a book tower at the Prague Municipal Library. It’s a big circular stack of books that people wait in line to see and take pictures with; its a social media thing, per Dana. As far as I’m concerned, people waiting in line to be with books is a good thing. More people should spend more time with books! (Well, the right kind of books. But lets not get into an argument of what constitutes the ‘right kind’ of books; wouldn’t want anyone to think I’m in favor of banning books because I’m definitely not.) If you look inside the stack, they have mirrors that make it appear as if its books for miles. What’s not to love?

The classical music was a lovely little chamber music concert at 5:00 at the Lichtenstein Palace on Malastranska. The Parnas Ensemble (a string quintet) played mostly well known (at least to me) classical songs with one or two unknown pieces. They were delightful, a lovely edition to my European holiday. I’ve missed hearing live classical music since I moved to Rhode Island; its not as easy to get to as it was back in Philly. (Love and miss the Philadelphia Orchestra!) I took a taxi to the concert (I could have walked but it was raining, and I’ve done a loooootttt of walking) and a tram home. I felt like a proper European – had a ticket before boarding, boarded the right tram line (#15) and thought I had even boarded in the right direction. I even said so in an Instagram post. But I had boarded in the wrong direction so rode to the end of the line and then hopped back on heading in the right direction. All part of the fun, lol.

I haven’t even gotten to the good food, or the exploring, but I suspect many readers will not make it this far, so will save those for another post.

Good night from Prague!