Pooped in Prague

What a day! After a good night’s sleep, I was ready to let this city sweep me off my feet.

It occurred to me this morning that with all these photos of food I’ve been taking, I’ve never taken any pictures of breakfast. And man, is breakfast good. I had a lazy morning today and only managed to stumble down to breakfast about 15 minutes before it was over. So I walked in, filled my plate with as much food as I could and got down to noshing. Tomorrow I’ll bring the camera.

After breakfast I took the subway into town. I feel like I’ve figured out the subway pretty well (ok, I know how to get from my stop to the center of town), and have figured out Prague enough to get around.This picture is pretty crappy, but I just thought I’d show you all where the subway lets me out. That’s right. While I love the Columbia Heights Target, the bullseye has nothing on this.

I first made my way back to the Jewish Quarter so I could get a picture of the Klausen Synagogue (the picture above. It’s the one with the names of the Holocaust victims on the walls) and check out the Spanish Synagogue which I had missed yesterday.

The Spanish Synagogue is big. Like way big. And inside it’s ornate. So scratch my comment yesterday about synagogues being understated. This one was not. The entire wall was covered with a red and blue and gold design with giant stained glass windows. Although, relative to some of the cathedrals I saw today, it was down right pauper-ish.

In front of the Spanish Synagogue is a statue of Golem and some dude (my bad. This is a statue of Franz Kafka. Wonder where I got my info from?). I would say the dude is Rabbi Loew who according to legend created Golem, but that dude looks a little too modern. Golem is this creature that was created from the clay to protect the Jews of Prague. But like crazy, sophisticated robots always do, Golem started to turn on the people. So they had to deactivate him. Supposedly his body is still in the attic of the Old New Synagogue in Prague just in case, and the attic is closed to the pubic so somebody can’t sneak in and accidently cause mass destruction or anything.

This is one of the towers at either side of the Charles Bridge. The Charles Bridge is this big, giant, super famous bridge in Prague that spans the Vitava river. I had never heard of it before. But anyways, there’s all sorts of stuff about it and about how they built it and how it’s the most amazing bridge ever. It connects the Lesser Quarter to the Old Town and apparently all sorts of crazy things in history happened on it. The most famous being that back in the day they threw this guy John off the bridge. This guy John is John of Nepomuk who is a national saint here. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? I’m not really up on my saints.

But yeah, the bridge. It’s big. And when you cross it you pass by all sorts of people. There are like 8 guys in a row how do caricatures and dozens of stalls selling artwork of Prague. And then there’s the random dude with a marionette putting on a rather impressive display of puppet work.

The Lesser Town is in no way lesser than the Old Town. Maybe it’s less old? I have no idea. Anyways, when I got there, I started walking up. Because up is where the stuff is at. In the picture above, on the far right, the bridge looking thing is, well, Charles Bridge. Then, moving to the right, the large green dome is St. Nicholas’ Cathedral and on the far right is the Prague Castle. That’s where I was headed.

This is St. Nicholas Cathedral. It’s a big church. Sometimes during these trips I see so many churches that I have trouble distinguishing them from one another. They all kind of blend in. This one is no different. Except it had a few fun statues inside. Like this one:

I don’t know who this pope-looking fella is, but I wouldn’t want to mess with him. He’s totally ramming his stick thing into that guy’s neck! This cathedral was full of all sorts of holy looking guys totally killing other folks. These people didn’t take any crap.

Then it was off to the castle! It’s up this long and winding street which I did not realize until I started walking up it. Actually, it wasn’t that bad. But it was super-duper hot. I’m not sure I’ve been quite as consistantly sticky as I have been this past week. Luckily I had an obnoxiously large bottle of water to keep my hydrated.

Also, I just realized I should have put a quarter next to that bottle of water for scale, because in this picture it just looks like a regular bottle of water. But it’s 1.5 liters. And it was like a buck. Because apparently water is cheap in Prague as opposed to Salzburg where it’s like 3 bucks for a bottle 1/6 of the size.

But enough about the water, lets get back to the castle. The Prague Castle is one of the largest castles in the world and has been around since the 1500s. The president of the Czech Republic works here. Kind of makes the White House look paltry.

The castle has these guards standing…guard in front of it. I guess there is some sort of changing of the guard, but I missed it. These fellas have to stand there perfectly still for who knows how long. What happens if they have an itch? Tourists come and go and stand uncomfortably close to them to get their picture taken. I felt kind of bad. But not bad enough to not blantently take a photo of them all on display like that.

This is St. Vitus Cathedral. It’s like the mac daddy of cathedrals. I said that synagogue was huge? Just kidding! This thing could eat that synagogue for lunch. It has like 10 chapels inside with 20 or so giant stained glass windows, an enormous alter thing, and who knows what else that we couldn’t see. On the audio guide (which I somehow managed to score for free), it has 25 sections. 25! The whole castle as like 45.

As over-the-top that it is, I have to admit it is very beautiful. My stained glass window picture taking leaves something to be desired though. (On another note, I saw some guy wearing a Threadless shirt in the cathedral. And I was wearing my traffic one. I felt like we had a small bond. I don’t think that feeling was shared.)

My next stop was St. George’s Basilica. I’m not sure what makes a basilica and basilica, but it’s fun to type. I am also not sure that I have anything interesting to tell you about it.

There was also a Washington Monument in the courtyard! Um..just kidding, the world doesn’t revolve around the US. I have no idea what this was for (my audioguide didn’t tell me. It just told me it was there.) but I thought it warrented a photo anyways. I also stopped in the Old Royal Palace.

This is the main room in the palace. I would have thought it was used for banquets and balls and the such but my trusty audioguide told me it was used for jousting. How awesome is that! And jousting was totally for the ladies. No better way to entertain a lady than to have two guys ride toward each other with giant pointy sticks. Yay impalement!

My last little stop was the Golden Lane. For some reason the Golden Lane is part of the extra package you have to pay for. Which I did. When you go it, that’s pretty much it. It’s a little street with tiny houses. Like, I have to duck to get into the doors. I think someone said it reminded them of Diagon Alley from Harry Potter and I totally agree. Except there aren’t any cool joke shops.

But what the Golden Lane does have is Kafka! Woo hoo! Kafka apparently rented this blue house for a while back in the day and wrote a book while he was there. I bought that book. Because I was in the house in which Kafka wrote that book. And I thought that it never hurt a bookshelf to have a little Kafka on it.

By then it was getting late and I was starving, so I decided to get some traditional Czech food for dinner. But first off, let’s look at this glass of Coke. What do you notice? Something is wrong here. Actually, there are two things wrong.

1.  See that line? With the 0,4 l next to it? They are all about marking the volume of a glass, so you don’t get cheated on your beverage. In Austria they were precise in their filling of beverages – never over the line, never under. Apparently in the Czech Republic they care a little less, because I totally got more. Or, maybe it was at the line before the added the ice. Which brings me to number 2.

2. There’s ice in the glass! Usually you have to ask for ice! I’ve noticed in Europe they don’t so much care about drinks being really really cold. Instead they prefer them to be slightly chilled. I find that a slightly chilled beverage is less refreshing than a really chilled beverage. Not sure why this is. But anyways…they gave me ice without asking. Maybe they are just very good at anticipating the wants of Americans.

For dinner I had roast duck. Roast duck is a Czech specialty. I had no idea. But I was pretty excited to eat something that wasn’t sausage, so I decided to give it a whirl. It was pretty good. I haven’t eaten much duck in my day, but this was pretty tasty. It was served with red cabbage (which tasted a lot like sauerkraut) and these bread things that they called dumplings.

After dinner I wandered down through the city, doing my part to bolster the Czech economy. The streets were teaming with tourists and people trying to sell you all sorts of stuff. After a while I decided to treat myself to a little gelato. My little cone cost about a dollar and while it was no Hodgies serving, it was still pretty good. I got the COOKIE flavor, mostly because it had the cutest label.

By then it was almost 8 o’clock so I decided to hang around the Old Town to see the animation thing on the astronomical clock. Can you see it? There are some little figures up top that pop out. And that’s pretty much it. I wasn’t all that impressed, but people were applauding. Applauding. Either I’m totally missing something, or foreigners definition of entertainment is way different than mine.

After that I headed back to my hotel where I’ve been sitting around not typing this up. Tomorrow morning I’m heading to the Terezin concentration camp and the maybe the Museum of Communism. So you know, a light day.