Journey to the Center of Europe

A few weeks back, our lovely little fishing village hosted a very big golf tournament, and our usually reasonable population of 25,000 (during the semesters) swelled to 250,000, so Isaac and I left town. After some deliberation, we settled upon Prague (Praha to the residents) as a suitable destination, by merits of its being off this briefly golf-crazed island and also for the relatively cheap deals we got on airline tickets and hotels.

Prague as a city is pretty well known for four things, or so, I think.

Coffee,


Beer,


Modern art,
(The top image is a pretty awesome sculpture near the stare mesto (old town) square, made entirely of keys, as might be evident from the close-up on the right; the bottom one of my favourite buildings, which we passed every day).



And jazz, which is everywhere but difficult to capture in a photo.

Isaac and I arrived around noon on Monday only to discover that Prague is a veritable sauna in the summer. We had booked an afternoon boat cruise, and so made our way to the river (hoping it would be cooler) to enjoy some water views of the city. This is the famous Charles Bridge:

And this a whimsical photograph I snapped of a cyclist on the riverside walkway, a little later.


We meandered a lot on our first night, and suddenly realised we were in Bohemia, land of green fairies and, well, Absintheries.


We spent most of the second day wandering through the older section of town, trying desperately to follow a "walk" in a five-year-old tour book we had borrowed from the library. We think some of the alleyways have been closed off since then, so I was distracted from taking photos by the fact that neither of us could figure out the author's directions. We lunched in a lovely restaurant (vegetarian, we later discovered!)that may or may not have been in the oldest street in Prague, and continued meandering. In the evening, we stumbled upon a jazz festival in the stare mesto, and amused ourselves by listening to the music, eating enormous sausages, and watching small children frighten pigeons.


On Wednesday, again unbearably hot, we visited Hradcany Castle (also called Prague Castle), which sits atop a high hill on the west side of the river.

Hradcany has some lovely gardens:

And a pretty stunning church in the middle of the castle grounds.

Too warm from the beating sun, we ventured even further up the hill to visit the Strahov Monastery (my one must-see destination from this trip). In addition to its charming restaurant, in which we were fed grilled meat, amazing plum dumplings, and some monastery-brewed beer (Isaac had a yellow wheat beer which he loved immensely), the monastery also hosts an amazing library. Photography rights cost as much as admission, so here's a picture of the outside:

We had supper at a highly recommended restaurant called Kolkovna. They fed Isaac a very lovely goulash with a soft pretzel, then took more than an hour to bring us our meals (which were very nice when they finally arrived). I had sauerkraut and pork pancakes with sour cream, and they were marvelous (facilitated, I am sure, by my extreme hunger).


We finished our evening by returning to the Absintherie we'd seen on Monday. We tried Absinthe straight on ice and also Absinthe poured over sugar and set on fire. After our fire Absinthe was prepared, we were given a moody little table with water and peanuts at which we could sip our drinks and ponder the bohemian lifestyle. (I suggested to Isaac that we begin singing songs from The Sound of Music, a la Moulin Rouge but we elected to walk home along the river in relative silence instead).


Given the oppressive heat, we tried a different approach on Thursday, and left the hotel at a little past six in the morning. We walked across the Charles Bridge, which is decorated with lovely statues of mostly biblical scenes, watched the sun rise, and had coffee together at a little cafe before walking back to the hotel for breakfast.



In the afternoon we visited the Jewish Quarter, which has mostly been taken over by street vendors and the high fashion shops of Pariska Street. The New and Old Synagogues stand side by side, separated by a narrow alleyway. (Attempts to take a wider photo of both together might have ended with an unfortunate car accident, so here they are separately).

Prague is also, supposedly, the birthplace of the marionette theatre, so we finished our day with an evening spent watching a puppet production of Mozart's Don Giovanni,.


Hoping for a quieter day, we spent a great deal of Friday morning exploring Vysehrad (Castle?), conveniently located up a hill just behind our hotel. Vysehrad, across the river and a bit south of Hradcany, is the historic "outpost" for Prague, and the views were stunning, as were the gardens. Vysehrad is also home to the Church of Sts. Cyril and Methodius.






We spent our last full day quietly, wandering through the stare mesto again and sipping coffee in various locations throughout the city. The square surrounds this enormous statue of Jan Hus.

On the far side of the square is the astronomical clock. On the hour, each hour, various figures appear at the open doors near the top of the clock. One, I think, is supposed to be the Devil letting a little sand seep from an hourglass. The square fills up with crowds of tourists for about fifteen minutes every hour, so this is the best photo I could manage.

We concluded our trip as we began it: with a boat tour of the city. We saw our lovely Vysehrad in the evening light:

We also had a stunning view of the sunset reflected in the aforementioned dancing buildings.

We walked home along the river after dark.

I went to Durham afterwards, but that's a subject for another blog post.