We don’t want to alarm our readers but we have come to the considered (over some wine) opinion that people, places and things change over time. When we started our blog, BlondeBrunetteTravel, a year and a half ago we were young and wide-eyed with enthusiasm!
Regrettably it does not appear that we benefitted from professional haircuts but the enthusiasm is palpable! We wanted to write about our trips together, make people laugh, make millions of dollars and find something semi-productive for Blonde to do with her time (other than get an actual job).
And we did all of that except the minor part about the million dollars. After all, we’ve been traveling the world together since 2002 and have lots of stories, more than a few false memories, some we fervently wish were false and, in a complete mockery of the TSA, are still not on the Do Not Fly list.
But a big part of how we realized the different perspectives that Blonde and Brunette bring to the party was based on our lives before we traveled together. Brunette traveled, but with 4 boys and a crabby OCD husband who pinched pennies, scowled and paced. Blonde was traveling with lovers-of-the-moment or girlfriends or by herself and spent what she pleased how, when and where she pleased.
In 2001, after Blonde had spent nearly a year planning a custom safari to Africa with a man who had two grown daughters, one of whom Blonde was hoping to write off as a “hunting accident”. But three weeks prior to departure she set the man and the daughter free and immediately booked herself a consolation trip so she wouldn’t reconsider kicking a rich man out of bed. The consolation prize was a trip by herself with Butterfield and Robinson, bicycling from Prague to Vienna.
The trip was, coincidentally, scheduled for September of 2001. Blonde flew from Newark to Prague the first day international flights resumed after the terrorist attacks of September 11th. There were 31 passengers on the 747 and it felt wrong, scary and somehow unpatriotic to be leaving the U.S. Blonde was living in Boston where some of the doomed flights had departed and had been shaken by the experience to the extent that she (honestly) wore a biking helmet to the bathroom in case her home was bombed. She was one of the 2 people in the country who thought duct tape was a reasonable defense against terrorism.
Upon arrival in Prague she checked into the Hotel Hoffmeister which she had chosen based solely on the fact that, at the time, it was a Relais and Chateaux property so sounded safe and respectable for a woman of dubious repute and snooty taste traveling alone.
Blonde’s arrival in Prague was when most of the world was deeply sympathetic to the U.S. and the U.S. had a never-before-experienced sense of vulnerability (and outrage) on our own land. In Wenceslas Square in Prague there were flowers, pictures, candles a poems and letters commemorating those killed or affected by the attacks. Blonde was moved, felt lonely and undeserving of the sympathy of every person in Prague who, when realizing she was American, expressed their condolences.
She wanted to tell her sister. So upon return to the hotel she asked if she could use their computer to send an email. (Yes children, this was before every tourist traveled with a tablet and a SmartPhone – unless you count paper tablets.) The staff obligngly allowed her full access to the computer and its Czech keyboard. It’s fair to say that the messages home looked as if they were a test of a new coding system that hadn’t had the bugs worked out. The keyboard was mostly what an American is used to seeing but with some surprising “Czech things” appearing on certain keys. The messages, intended to be sensitive and thought provoking, were instead hilarious and unintelligible.
Blonde decided that she wanted to see more of Prague and asked the hotel if they could arrange a private guide for a walking tour. This was done and an email was sent home saying that it was a great idea to rent a friend – or at least that was what it meant to say, the impression given was of something quite different. The “Rent A Friend” turned out to be a woman who was a history professor at a university in Prague. She was good company, knowledgeable, knew how to expertly bribe gatekeepers and had a son who had once worked at the World Trade Center but was now producing what (at least to Blonde) sounded like porn films in Miami.
As Blonde navigated Prague on her (semi) own she knew she wanted her sister to see it too. She tried to say so in an email but probably said something that even the NSA couldn’t decipher (at least at that time).
Exit Blonde, insert 12 years of time that saw a different view of America’s role in the world, a global recession and a technology revolution not to mention Miley Cyrus or Edward Snowden {now rumored to be engaged per a call overheard on Angela Merkel’s cellphone). It’s time to take another look at Prague as technology-laden Americans in their midst. This time it will be taken with Brunette and experienced from our lush accommodations at this stunning GoWithOh apartment.
We will happily take the lift to our air-conditioned, centrally located lodgings that will allow us to conveniently access Prague’s charms and to stumble home after enjoying some Veltínské Zelené, one of the many under-recognized white wines of The Czech Republic. (Of course we would be remiss to never do any stumbling after having a beer in this, the world’s #1 beer drinking nation.)
In the evenings we will blog, tweet, Instagram, Facebook and do any other self-promoting activity possible as we enjoy our spacious apartment’s wi-fi and use our new-fangled technology to avoid any actual interaction with each other. (The two bedrooms will also be an advantage in case Blonde snores or Brunette eats eggplant.)
It will be hard to leave our no-smoking home to venture out into the world but we will do so in order to gain our required vacation poundage. We will be careful to only consume Palacinky as a dessert, never breakfast, so that no one will suspect that we are tourists. Oh no, they’ll never guess with that clever subterfuge!
As we will be in Prague in August there will be no living with Brunette unless some swimming is involved. Luckily we can take a ten minute tram ride from our GoWithOh apartment to the year-round swimming complex at Podoli and attempt to work off some of that Palacinky we had earlier. (OK, so we did have it for breakfast, big deal!)
Not ones to only do the expected sights we will throw in a visit to the Sedle Cossuary or “Church of Bones” in Kutna Hora, an hour’s train ride from our GoWithOh abode. The church’s decorator must have had some serious body image issues as the church is decorated with more than 40,000 human skeletons, including the use of at least one of every human bone in this chandelier. Try getting that from Pottery Barn (now available at Horchow.com)!
After that weird spooky experience we will resolve the next day to be sure to get up early and see all of the sights we missed while we were swimming, making snarky comments about boneheads in church and tweeting and changing our Facebook status every 3 minutes.
Brunette will be in charge of making coffee in the large, modern kitchen of our GoWithOh apartment while Blonde bumbles around in her pajamas grumbling about it being too early.
Because we don’t know which of two Czech proverbs the apartment’s owners embrace we will leave the kitchen (and everything else) spotless. The somewhat conflicting proverbs are:
Host do domu, Bůh do domu.
A guest in your home is like a God in your home.
Host do domu, hůl do ruky.
If a guest comes to your home, grab a stick.
Most likely we will wander across the Charles Bridge to see the Prague Castle, the world’s largest castle and one that doesn’t particularly look like a castle but hey, it is what it is. We’ll go to Strahov Hill, to the Mucha Museum just so we can blog about a place most people miss and we’ll watch the Astronomical Clock do its thing in the Old Town Square. And then we’ll be amazed that it could be so late and try to contact Ivana Trump to see if she’s free for some al fresco dining. (We will let her know that we’re wearing T-shirts proclaiming us to be Canadian just in case America isn’t all that popular at the moment.)
After some more of that Czech wine we learned to love earlier in our visit we will talk about all that has changed from 2001 to 2014. American and world politics, bringing your own keyboard and technology everywhere you go, and expanded travel options that now include easily renting beautiful apartments online. And the surprising fact that we now travel together and blog about it and actually think “blog” is a verb.
Then we will wander back to our apartment, do our laundry because we can, pack and start talking about where we want to go next.
Hey GoWithOh, could you please get some luxury accommodations in The Seychelles? Just askin’.
Goodbye Prague, we have gained some weight and are a little older than when we started our blog but we’re still two hot American foxes on the loose!