Prague

Date: 14-17/09/2017
From/To: Dubrauke – Prague
Distance: 195 Km
Total Distance: 16066 Km
Weather: Cold, Drizzle, Warm, Sunny
Road: Paved

We left Dubrauke in the afternoon, after Marion left for her physio therapy. It started drizzling on the way (we have our personally cloud) but it stopped when we arrived in Prague. Here we had our first traffic jam for a long time. We were greeted by Blanca on arrival at the booked accommodation. There was a pool and a hot tub to relax. I didn’t feel that well (got Sigrid’s stomach bug), so we deferred the hot tub session.


The next day we explored Prague. There was a subway- the train, not the restaurant..- close by, so we hopped on it and arrived in the city within 15 min. Since we didn’t have a map, we just guessed the direction and stumbled over a small marked with all sorts of art and food.


After we found the tourist information, we had a map and some directions. First we looked at the old town hall with the astronomical clock build at the beginning of the 15th century. The clock has two dials, one showing the position of the sun and moon and other astronomical details, the other is a calender dial, representing the month. Each hour, there is “The Walk of the Apostles”, a clockwork showing the figures of the Apostles. By chance we were there right at 12:00, as you can see there was a large crowd to see the ‘Walk of the Aposteles’.

 


Unfortunatelly they renovated the town hall so we couldn’t appreciate it. Anyway, there is the picture from both of us in front of the old town hall and the old town square.

 


On the square was as well the ‘Church of Our Lady before Týn’ (I love wiki). I took the pictures only of the small spires, because they look like out of a cindarella movie.


We found wonderful restored houses walking through the old town


Sigrid found a devil and had to hold it on his horns

We found the fireman sculpture rescuing a victim from fire. I it was at the top of house


When we enquired in the tourist office if there were free guided tours in Prague, we meet Jan. He was very friendly and knowledgable. He just returned from China, so we spend quite a bit of time in the tourist office to talk about Prague and the possibility of traveling on our own through China. .

From here we walked to the Charles Bridge, well that was the plan. We must have turned somewhere too early; we ended up at this monument, which looked rather interesting.

From there we could take a picture of the Charles Bridge from the side.


This is the bridge tower, the entrance to the Charles Bridge.

On the Charles Bridge there are a lot of sculptures, each is fascinating on its own right.


This is the other side of the bridge, the entrance to the little city.

Uphill from the little city, there is the Prague Castle

The Prague Castle is the largest ancient castle in the world. It is more a castle complex, with a cathedral inside. You can see the tower over the top of the main gate.


The cathedral and one of the gargolyes.


Looking a bit closer shows how much work is put into all the details


Here is the cathedral from the side with the St.Vitus tower, which can be climbed-We’ll leave that for another day….

On our way back we realised how deep the subway goes, the escalator was long and steep.

The next day we took the tram to the city when we came across this lightning rod on a car park. It was in the middle of a staircase. I would use the elevator instead of the staircase J

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Back in the old city we noticed at one house some windows only painted J


We came across this restaurant where you eat in middle age style, no forks and knives, use only the hands.


Back in the castle we visited the church treasury; it is one of the most extensive treasuries in Europe. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures. There was at least one guard in each room who was watching you. So the only picture is Sigrid at the entrance. I was impressed by the craftsmanship of the 10th century.

We thought we need some exercise after so much culture, so we climbed the ‘Great Tower’.

At the top we were exhausted, but the view was worth it. On the left is the view down to the square and a bit of the ‘Little Town’ and on the right both towers of the cathedral.


A view over Prague with it bridges.

On our way we found again an Irish Pub J But we didn’t go in, there was still too much to visit J

We hopped onto the ‘Funicular Railway‘ to get onto the top of the ‘Petrin Hill’ were a small Eifel Tower is located.


Here is the tower from the bottom. We didn’t climb up since we already had a great view over the city earlier in the day


Next we went to the other side of town, to the ‘Krizikova Fountain‘. The fountains are located in a park and they have a show to different types of music. Since it started to get cold, we picked the earliest show, it was classical music. Below you can see the setup before the show.

I liked the idea to use water as a screen and projects short movie scenes on it. This reminded us at the ‘Bellagio’ in Las Vegas.


The following pictures are from our way back as we passed a brigde. The buildings looked nice, I liked the purple towerJ

And the Prague Castle at night.

Tomorrow we pack up and leave for Venice. Apparently it should be warmer there -we shall see…

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