Friday (day before yesterday) morning. We walked through the Old Town, toured several synagogues and the Jewish Museum, as well as the oldest Jewish cemetery in all of Europe (so gorgeous in the rain!). On the way back to the hotel, my usual lunch crowd and I peeled off from the rest of the group and ate at a "Svejk" restaurant on Paris Street. And Paris Street is everything you might imagine-- Dior, Gucci, Louis Vitton, Burberry, Prada, and everybody else all on the same street! The irony is that that quarter of town, and that street, used to be the Jewish ghetto.
Anyway, lunch was "fried cheese"-- hermelin cheese, which was all right (an acquired taste I think, but not bad) until I found out later that hermelin cheese is also known as white mould cheese... urgh!

After lunch! Penny's brother Andrew and his wife Ingrid were also with us, and so we all went over to the "Slavia" cafe, the most popular cafe in Prague (according to our guide Eva), right across from the National Theatre. I had tiramisu-- real tiramisu (which everyone was teasing me about!) and a latte with honey in it... yum! So then we walked back to the hotel... and it was time to get ready for our concert!

Concert at the Czech Museum of Music. The building actually used to be a church, so the acoustics were fabulous. We did a really long concert, plus rehearsal beforehand. I felt really good during rehearsal, so I had the brilliant idea to tackle the high C at the end of "Battle of Jericho." Of course, by the time we got to that song at the very end of our performance, I was so tired... but I guess it was all right. I really loved that concert-- our reception from the Czech people-- and there were representatives from Dobrichovice there to welcome us-- was so nice and friendly! We did the "Otcenas" for the first time-- and the tenor solo (performed by Dr P, who else?) was absolutely stunning. And the Czech people seemed to really appreciate our attempt to sing in their language!

Anyway, lots of back-patting and hand-shaking after the concert... Dr P, Mary Ann, and Penny were invited by the mayor(?) of Dobrichovice and his crew out to dinner, and although I could have gone with the rest of my "usual crowd" I was so exhausted, I just wanted to go back to the hotel, get something quick, and crash. Haha. Trinka and I went into the hotel restaurant at 9:00... and we didn't leave until after 11:00. About 75% of our group decided to eat there, as well as several other groups, and the entire staff consisted of one waiter (who had to have been also cooking!) and two trainees. I was really impressed with the professionalism of the waiter-- he wasn't slow and he wasn't harried, he just was doing his job as smoothly and efficiently as possible. Still! Trinka and I were thoroughly loopy by the time we were able to go to our rooms!

And the next day...

(Oh, finally uploaded pictures from our first day in Vienna! http://picasaweb.google.com/ICouldGoOnSinging/ViennaDay1 No captions yet though... working on it!)