Weather reports for the past few days have been warning about a large weather system bringing cooler temperatures and significant rainfall. Today, the weather report called for an 80% chance of rain throughout the day. Most of us prepared by bringing raincoats, umbrellas, etc. since we were to spend a significant part of the day outside. Well, MFC must live in the 20% zone because while the temperature was much more comfortable, we didn’t see a drop of rain all day.

Our tour this morning was a 2.5 hour walking tour of the old town. We learned about some of the lovely old buildings, the Jewish quarter, the various churches and the most interesting astronomical clock. Our guide ensured that we arrived in the square in time to see the clock chime the hour…replete with moving figures. I’m told there are a number of good examples of how the clock works on YouTube.

After lunch we gathered in the St Nicholas Church in Old Town for the last of our concerts. This is a baroque style church dating back to 1737. For much of its history it was used as a Russian Orthodox house of worship. Today it is owned and managed by the Hussite church – a group that has broken away from the Roman Catholic Church. We had a choice after the concert to return to our hotel or to stay downtown until after dinner. We decided to attend the organ concert at St Nicholas, scheduled for 5pm. There was also another concert scheduled for 8pm…that would be the third concert today. The church is certainly well used! The organ concert included a few selections by a soprano soloist and was a relaxing way to spend an hour before dinner.

We returned back to the hotel and wandered over to the big shopping mall next door to check out Czech shopping. It’s quite interesting to see how many of the stores are the same as those at home – Tesco, H&M, Swarovski, Adidas, Nike, etc. We haven’t really done much shopping – mostly because there has not been much time – but maybe tomorrow we’ll check out the crystal since that seems to be ‘the thing’ here.

Now to cheer on the Netherlands!