I agree that it’s an impressive clock.

“It’s supposed to have been built by Jan Hanus,” says Mimi. “The story goes that when the clock was finished, some of the city fathers decided to blind the clockmaker, so that he couldn’t make another clock like it.”

“The guy builds a great clock, and in appreciation, they blind him?”

“With a hot poker,” says Mimi. “After he was blinded, he made his way to the clock, and before anyone could stop him, he sabotaged the mechanism.”

“Can’t fault him for that.”

“It’s a good story,” says Mimi, “but the clock was really built by Mikulas of Kadan and Jan Sindel. And there was no eye gouging involved.”

“So why doesn’t it work?”

“No idea,” says Mimi. “What about that messenger bag?”

One of the problems with travel is that once you start, you can’t get away from it. If I were home, I could take a break and go out to my workshop, or I could sit in the backyard and read a book, or I could curl up on the bed with Muffy and take a nap. These aren’t options when you travel, since one of the demands of travel is that you keep moving.

“What do you want to do next?”

We are standing in the middle of Old Town Square, next to a massive monument composed of creepy guys dressed in long robes. One of them is reaching out with a claw-like hand, as though he is going to snatch up a passing child and eat it.

“Surprise me.”

“The old Jewish cemetery in Prague,” says Mimi, reading from the guidebook, “has more than eleven thousand gravestones.”

“You want to spend the afternoon looking at gravestones?”

“You know who’s buried there?”

“Elvis.”

“Are you tired, Bird? Is that the problem?”

“I wouldn’t mind an espresso.”

“You just had pizza.”

“We’re on vacation,” I say. “People on vacation sit in cafés and drink espresso.”

I’M NOT SURE why we travel.

The default response is that we travel in order to see new places, to meet new peoples, to broaden our understanding of the world.

Whereas I tend to see travel as punishment for those of us who can afford such mistakes.

Travel does allow us to collect new adventures, gather up new stories we can share with family and friends. The problem is that travel stories are only interesting if something untoward happens, if trouble makes an appearance, if a disaster is survived.

No one cares that your trip to Turkey went off without a hitch, that your plane was on time, that your room was lovely and had a view of the Aya Sofya, that the food was marvellous and cheap, that everyone spoke English, and that you weren’t robbed, mugged, or annoyed in any way by the locals, the police, or other tourists.