Sunday in Stromovka

As part of Helena’s ongoing program to keep me from becoming completely amorphous and being absorbed by the couch, we did a bike ride today, and Isabel came, too.
It was a perfect, warm autumn day, a babileto sort of day,
The plan was to more or less duplicate our last bike ride, but on the other side of the river, but it didn’t quite work out like that. We got to a point where the path diverged in a multicolored, but still mostly green wood, and we could have continued on to Bubeneč, and Podbaba, and points north per the original plan, but the signs indicated that it was only a couple of kilometers to Dolni Šarka, which is probably not far from Divoka Šarka,, which is definitely a worthwhile destination, but before we knew it we were turned around and just cycling back through Stromovka Park, which was far more civilized (and paved) but also far, far more crowded.
We came across a pack of runners, coming along towards us at a pretty good clip, and as we were passing it seemed that the stream would never end. There were people of all ages, and a few were on scooters or bicycles, a few had dogs, a few were riding bikes and had dogs on leashes (and some not) running alongside them, and I thought ‘of all these hundreds of people, probably every one of them is fitter than me’ and it turned out it was some sort of event to raise money for animal shelters, and there were a lot of tents set up further on, with snacks, souvenirs, and all sorts, and there was a stage with music, so we stopped for a drink and a snack and a rest before completing the last leg of the homeward journey.
There is so much trouble and pain and anxiety in this old world, but on a Sunday in a park in Prague on a perfect autumn day, all that fades away and everything just seems to be fine.