2 June 2018
It is Sam’s 21st birthday today, and he was good enough to agree to spend some of it with us, before he started the serious celebrations. He didn’t fancy a trip to the zoo, but we arranged to meet for ice cream instead, so after a sensible start to the day (i.e. Cornelia waking up before midday…) we marched on down to the train station bang on time to start the trek into Prague. Cornelia was very excited about having her own train ticket and held onto it very carefully as we waited for it to arrive.
Apart from a half hour delay, when our train just stopped and then didn’t move, the train journey was easy enough, and we found Sam waiting for us, plugged in to his headphones…! We then took the Metro to the ice cream sandwich shop. What a revelation and who knew such things existed?! You got to choose your cookies, then your ice cream, then your topping. Yahooo! Bugsy was almost distraught when she was told they didn’t have chocolate ice cream (I mean, really, what kind of ice cream shop doesn’t have chocolate ice cream?!), but cheered up enormously with a chocolate chip cookie, and vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce. In case you’re wondering, Ian had peanut butter cookies filled with banana ice cream and maple syrup, and I had lemon & poppy seed cookies, with pistachio ice cream. Sam went totally off the rail, sampling bacon cookies with walnut ice cream and olive oil on top! All totally delicious. It was then time to say goodbye to Sam. We’ve totally loved seeing him these last couple of days, and once again, Cornelia has enjoyed having someone other than us to talk to (and be carried by)!
Getting to the zoo then felt like a bit of an adventure, as we had to take the Metro then find the bus which would take us to the zoo, but actually, it was incredibly easy, even without a word of Czech between us. Prague Zoo is amazing. I’m not a massive fan of zoos in general, preferring animals to be kept in the wild where possible, but today I also saw some very well-cared for animals many of which are endangered in the wild and surviving because of these zoos. It was huge! We walked around for ages before I suggested that we should stop for lunch (as it was already quite late in the afternoon) and when we checked the map, we hardly scratched the surface! We must’ve walked for miles, checking out all of the different exhibits, watching polar bears swimming on their backs, taking the chair lift up and back down the hill, and playing in the kids’ area.
We could’ve stayed for longer, but it was getting really late and we knew it’d take about two hours to get back to the campsite, so managed to drag Cornelia away (although that itself took a very long time!) and hop on bus back to the Metro. We were very late for any supper for her, but as she’d had a big plate of spaghetti for lunch, she said she’d be happy with just a sandwich. She chose a ham sandwich at the supermarket, but unfortunately, as she started eating it on the train, discovered it had mustard in it, which she refused to eat. I gave her a cherry yoghurt, which she also dismissed. And some cheese. Nope! So supper for her turned out to be a banana, some slices of chicken and cucumber, and cream crackers with butter, all back at the campsite instead. Despite stomping back to our site with a 16kg toddler on my back, neither Ian nor I were particularly hungry, so we had a small plate of salad each, once she’d settled down for the night, accompanied by a much-needed beer!
Cornelia's adventures around the world 