Ok, I will admit that I am not a very good blogger. Considering it's been about a month and I've been on several trips since I last posted and I haven't written a thing about any of them. Better late than never, right?

Anyway, last month my mom and sister (McKenna) went on a roadtrip to visit me in Prague for my birthday (in case anyone doesn't know, my family is living in Harrogate, England right now, so no driving through the Atlantic Ocean was necessary). My mom's friend Heather also met us there with her daughter Abby and niece Lucy. We had a really nice time, and I had a lot of fun showing my mom and sister around the town I've been living in for the last two months.

The first day we went to the Alfons Mucha exhibition in the Obecní dům (Municipal House), which is a collection of Mucha's prints that a famous Czech tennis player had collected over the years and displayed in his home in Florida. He agreed to set up this exhibition in Prague so people could see the impressive amount of work Mucha did for various advertising commissions. We weren't allowed to take any photos,  hence me trying to describe this with words, rather than just show you the pictures. It was pretty cool though, and I think even McKenna, who hates museums, enjoyed going to it. Of course, Alfons Mucha is one of her favorite artists, so it would have been hard for her to not have liked it.

That night we ate at a Thai restaurant and walked around Prague at night, which was great because I'm not usually.... actually I'm never in Prague at night, so I finally got to get some cool shots of all the buildings all lit up and at their prettiest. I love seeing cities at night because there's just something almost magical about it. Peaceful... (well, as peaceful as Prague can get, anyway. There are many things Prague is, but quiet is not one of them...)

The day of my birthday we walked down Karls Bridge and up to the castle. We took a tour of some of the buildings on the castle grounds, then grabbed lunch and went to the Museum of Communism.

St. Vitus Cathedral on the castle grounds.

Left to right: Me, Mom, McKenna, Heather, Lucy, Abby.

The Tyn (pronounced teen) Church on the Old Square.

For my birthday we went to Hard Rock Cafe. My first American meal since I left the United States back at the beginning of May, and it was awesome. As much as I love Czech food, and other traditional foods around this awesome Earth of ours, sometimes it's nice to just have a burger, you know?

The Old Square at night.

The next day we went to the Jewish Quarter and saw some of the synagogues and the Old Cemetery. I've been a couple times now, and each time the Old Cemetery and the Spanish Synagogue have been my favorite. The Jews were confined to this area of town, so in the Old Cemetery they didn't have enough room to bury people after a while. Whenever they ran out of room, they had to lay another layer of dirt on top of everything, pull up the existing tomb stones to ground level, and then bury people in the new layer. So it's literally hundreds of tombstones squished next to each other everywhere. It's a very somber place, but very peaceful.

The Spanish Synagogue. It's so intricately decorated and the colors are gorgeous! (My mom was like "Maddie, take a picture of that so I can paint my dining room that color!" Our house is literally inspired from all of our travels, not even kidding.)

Eating some awesome traditional Czech food. Meat and potatoes, what's not to like?

And I may be way over enthusiastic about this, but there's this place Nikola showed me downtown that serves soft serve ice cream that is seriously the best soft serve ever. And I know I'm definitely overrating this, but whatever. It's delicious. You can get strawberry and banana, or chocolate and yoghurt. Not chocolate and vanilla. Chocolate and yoghurt. It's. So. Good.

Yay! I'm older! I do not feel any older, and I definitely don't look like I've aged since I was 18, as everyone likes to tell me. "Yeah, I've actually just graduated from university, not high school" is how that conversation generally ends.

After Prague, my mom, McKenna, and I split with the Jarmans and headed out for Germany and Poland. Considering the ridiculous number of photos on this post already, I'll split this little trip into a few posts so it's all a little more digestable.

Right now I'm visiting my family in Harrogate, England and I've really been enjoying this time with all of us together (except Megan and Chadd). Christmas will be great when we're all together for real. Can't wait!