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Week 19 & 20 of 2024 (In Review)
I can’t complain about early May – my spring fatigue and illness were over and it was birthday week! My early May birthday fell on a Wednesday this year but we were still able to make a one night getaway trip to Cesky Krumlov – the obvious choice for a fairytale experience within a thirty-minute drive. The actual day was pretty overcast but still did all the things such as plenty of outdoor time, coffees, playgrounds for the little one, sushi for a celebration dinner — it’s always what I request. This year I treated myself to a stay at the Zamecka Apartments at the very foot of the castle…
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Summer, Lately: Celebrations & Life With a 12 Month Old
We had a beautiful month of June here in South Bohemia. I have to say that I feel like I was so tired for at least half the month and had no idea why… until I realized that the allergy meds I am taking every other day for hay fever make me terribly drowsy. I am quite ready for allergy season to be over (still sneezing) but at least June was spent in a dreamy sort of daze. It started with a beautiful choir concert performed at a little festival in an apple orchard near Lišov. What an amazing setting and reminder (just when I really needed it) of how…
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May, Lately + More Thoughts of Traveling “These Days”
What a beautiful spring we are having this year! Unlike other years where it’s been like winter winter winter SUMMER and maybe one week of spring temperatures, we’ve really seen spring this year. April has been full of warm days and sun, trickling into May, even though we’re in a couple days of a cold snap right now (a good excuse to sit down and write something), I have really been enjoying it (ughhh, I probably say this every year, so here it is). I just actually learned about the days May 12-14 here called the “days of the ice men” (Ledoví muži). This is because those days are the…
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chateau birthday
there’s a place about an hour northeast of prague in the middle of central bohemia where there stands a hill that has had both christian and pagan significance for hundreds and hundreds of years. finally a chateau was built on this spot, overlooking the valley below and a family lived there until 1948. it sat unoccupied until the early-aughts when a czech woman bought the decrepit chateau and fixed it up, meanwhile happening to fall in love with an american man who had entrepreneurial visions of what this space could one day become. today that place is called chateau mcely, and it’s exactly where i spent a few completely relaxing…
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the art and balance of treating yourself
i’m still figuring this ish out. it may seem like i’ve got it all handled, but it’s been and continues to be a process. learning how to budget for two people on teacher’s salaries has been a slippery slope, but i’m finally grasping it. then add a dog into that mix (ohhh, so that’s where the extra cash for the past few months has been going…), and a five week trip back to the u.s. this summer (across four different states), and well, there can be complications. i think i’m getting the hang of it, though, and our “seasons of poor” have been less and less frequent as i learn…
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may: friday things
hey friends – hope you are having a beautiful may! i always enjoy this birthday month and finally shaking the winter cobwebs away, preparing for the fun that will come with spring… especially more travel opportunities, heh. we enjoyed a gorgeous weekend in prague (above, on kampa) to celebrate my birthday but honestly, i’ve been finding that most of the action is right here in south bohemia lately. hoping that in june we’ll have some time to steal away for some adventures. so! here are a few memorable moments and some things i’ve been into this past month. 1. boat trip! i’m not exactly a boating novice (i wrote about our kayak…
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this is thirty
i look young for my age, or so i’ve been told. nobody has asked me for my age very recently, but whenever they do, they’re met with some sort of shock at how old i am. being told this has never really made a lot of sense to me. it’s like “thank you, i guess?” but i’ve lived all of these years; i’ve earned them. when i look in the mirror, i see each one of them (and those damn smile lines from my four years working at starbucks – thanks a lot, customer service). so, this is what thirty looks like. it doesn’t mean i have to be this or…
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spring around here
officially, spring has sprung and since easter weekend, we’ve had a handful of gorgeous warm days here in south bohemia with highs above 22ºC! (although you wouldn’t know it by how bare most of the trees here still are!) i’m still not quite used to this continental european “spring”. it seems to come in mid-april, still with bare trees sometimes, and by early june, we are blasted with either heat-wave temperatures (or rain and floods, depending on the year). spring is a blink-and-you-miss-it affair, unlike western washington with our first cherry blossoms blooming in late february! i’m really trying to get into it this year, though… embrace those mild temperatures…
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in prague: botanical garden
as a spring baby, i have developed a great love of visiting some sort of garden on my birthday. early may is usually prime time to see certain flowers in bloom and everything around looks positively lovely. so when one of my friends here in budějovice tipped me off that the butterflies are hatching from their chrysalises at a special event on the prague botanical garden in troja, i mentally made my afternoon plans. the garden isn’t located in the center but rather the far reaches of prague’s seventh district, beyond holešovice. the butterfly event goes from early april to early may (just over one month), so we were there…
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prague birthday
hi friends! i just took two full days off from doing anything except having birthday adventures, and it was quite a wise decision, really. by the time my head hit the pillow on night two, i was completely exhausted. the good kind, like you want. i spent it in prague this year and started the day with a growling stomach, so decided to finally give cantina a try. back when i was living in prague and totally broke, i would walk past this restaurant on the way home from going to the supermarket and wish that someday soon i could go here, as it has reputedly the best mexican cuisine in…
