Law, Partially

Bob's been travelling a lot, but just now he finally stepped behind the Iron Curtain. In Prague, we hoped to find a 19th century cityscape, peppered with gothic churches and imposing communist block buildings, difficult to pronounce heavily accented words, diverse pilsner beers for less than $2/pint, and restaurant bills under $30. We did find some good bargains, but at many places, the prices looked more like London prices. Some places straight up gouged us. For what we did find in Prague was a stream of tourists like we have never seen before. Look at how many people are on that bridge, below. Prague is not a large city, and the tourist sights are in a compact area and limited in number. I don't have the statistics to prove it, but I believe the number of tourists per tourist site would be much higher in Prague than in Paris and London, which although much bigger cities, they also have so many more sights to visit. Over the past dozen years, I think the secret about Pragu

This big boy started daycare (or nursery, as it's known here) today. For now, he is going one day a week. As he gets used to it, we will ramp it up, so that by the fall, when Mum starts school, he will be going close to full-time. I stayed home from work for his first day; upon dropping him off, Mum and I had a relaxing child-free day visiting cafes on Holloway Road. Bob was sad when we said goodbye to him at daycare, crying, though the minders ensured us that once we left he was fine and had fun playing with the other kids. The toddler room is a strange place. It's a bit small and just full of kids moving in all different directions and bouncing off each other and redirecting like a game of pong played in a small room with twenty balls, each kid a ball. When an adult enters the room, the swarm of children flows toward the door to gather around. God bless these nice ladies who every day come and take care of these toddlers, all while seeming to enjoy it. Part of me wants to

London is one of the greatest -- arguably the greatest -- museum city in the world. London also has some of the worst weather of a major city in the world. Chicago has the extremely cold winters; Singapore has the unreasonable heat and humidity; London has sunless winters where every day brings a slow drizzle of precipitation with a temperature just high enough to keep it all from turning to snow (but a few degrees colder and it's snowmageddon: all trains stop everywhere). Chris, Bob, and I filled many cold, weekend days with adventures to and in London's famous museums. It's not that Bob doesn't like museums, he just doesn't appreciate them. He seems to take the triumphs of human civilization as a given and hasn't shown a great interest in the lineage that brought us here, or its documentation in museums. He does like museums, though, because they present wide open rooms for him to unleash his best run-walking skills, regardless of who may be standing in his

Tourist numbers aren't as high in Lisbon as Barcelona, but it's only a matter of time. In the meantime, we loved our time in Lisbon. We went for two primary reasons: warmth and custard tarts. London has been so cold and rainy; we were desperate for some sun. We did find some Lisbon sun, though the temperature wasn't exactly hot. Bob received a happy welcome all over Lisbon and was kissed by many waitresses and had cheeks pinched by many grandmas. Back in Iowa, years ago, his namesake, Uncle Bob, confused lesbian women with "Lisbon women." The Lisbon women here were swooning for Bobby, as I imagine would the Lisbon women of northeastern Iowa. (My grandma said about her brother Bob, "Who the hell taught him how to speak?") We stayed in an apartment on the top floor of an old building in the ancient Alfama neighborhood. The apartment had a wide balcony, and from there we could see the River Tagus. With a nod to the famous patterned tiles found all over

Which city is best? Christine, Bob, and I have been compiling some evidence on two candidates: Barcelona and Lisbon. Barcelona Barcelona is a handsome city like Paris, with a medieval quarter and stately buildings on wide boulevards outside. I was picturing a city full of cafes overflowing with Spanish wines, ham slices cut straight from the legs, sheep cheeses, roasted vegetables, and those famous small glasses of beer. Instead, the city was just overflowing with tourists, many of them at these cafes. Other tourists have as much right to visit Barcelona as the FD Linges. But at some point the city feels a bit less authentic and designed just to serve the tourist trade. Were the people at the sidewalk cafes drinking those giant beers on La Rambla locals? Does it matter? Tourism morality is not easy to make sense of. Unfortunately, we probably just picked a poor weekend to go. We visited on Easter; several venues in our list were closed, including restaurants and museums; and Barc