Greetings from Prague!

June 19-20
Greetings from Prague! Kim, Elizabeth (a friend of Kim’s), and I left for Prague on Saturday morning around 7:30 a.m. We arrived shortly before 9:30 a.m. however, we had a difficult time locating our hotel, THE SILENZIO; that took almost a half hour, even with the navigator. The hotel is nestled in the trees and side roads of Prague. It’s a beautiful hotel in a secluded location. The hotel is located in a gated community, as car theft in Prague is a highly lucrative business (so says my sister). We checked in, parked our car, and headed for the underground subway into the city. It was about a 15 minute walk a 5 minute ride into Prague. First on the list of visits was the Jewish Quarter. We quickly realized everything was closed because of the Sabbath, so that would be Sunday’s visit. Continuing our walk, we happened upon a piece of art work comprised of over 85,000 keys. The artwork was made by Vodafone, a large phone company (sort of like Verizon to us). We continued our walk to the clock tower located in the center of the square. On the way, we saw the end of a wedding and watched as people congratulated the bride and groom. Throughout the walk we passed beautiful buildings with large windows, arches, columns, painted and unpainted with art work on the walls, and sculptured windows. Along with this, the buildings are tall and built close together and are many different colors (from orange to yellow, to green and blue). And, let’s not forget the orange roofs on almost all the buildings. The monuments and castles throughout the city are absolutely beautiful!

The clock tower is located in Old Town Square.We took an elevator to the top for better sightseeing of the city. Every hour the clock chimes, the apostles appear in the window. There’s a skeleton playing music, a miser and the profligate, and the science of astronomy. The clock shows the years, months, days, and hours along with the rising and setting of the sun and moon. The earth is painted in the center of the clock face. And, believe it or not, I met two guys from Ohio, one from the Columbus area and the other from Toledo. Who would have thought? Riding around the clock tower were several people on a five person bike; that was pretty cool, one guy doing all the work for the other passengers. After watching the clock (every hour if you would like) we listened to a group of men sing a variety of songs. It appeared to be a traveling group and they entertained the crowd.


We continued walking around the city, in and out of places that captured our interest including a museum, a variety of novelty shops, bakeries, and an outside market. We stopped for a few moments to eat a fresh fruit salad at the market before continuing our afternoon of sightseeing. On our way to the visitors center, we did a little window shopping at Cartier; no souvenirs from there! The three of us took a horse and carriage ride around the city as well; it was an opportunity to see other parts of the downtown area after a long afternoon of walking. Some of the most memorable stores included Dior, Louis Vuitton, Hugo Boss (men’s clothing), and Burberry (out of England/famous plaids) to name a few. After a little more sightseeing we had a lovely dinner at Pravda, located in the Jewish Quarter. As most of you know I almost always choose a chicken meal when eating out. However, I walked on the wild side that night and thought while in Prague how about experiencing something traditionally. So, I ate Old Czech Beef Goulash and it was yummy.

After dinner we went to St. Nicholas church for a tour and to listen to the New Prague Symphony. It was an hour long music program listening to the trumpet, violin, and cello. The church tour was shorter. The ceiling dome celebrates the Holy Trinity and the ceiling in the nave represents the Glorification of St. Nicholas; the church is gorgeous. About this time, it was a little after 9:00 p.m. so we headed to the Town Square to watch the World Cup game. It was Denmark and Cameroon. The game was shown on a huge screen. It was fun to watch the crowd getting into the game, cheering and making noise. Of course, I cheered when they cheered and booed when they booed. We started walking back to the Metro station after watching the game for about 20-30 minutes; it was a long day and we were tired. Sunday morning we began our day bright and early. We arrived at the Prague Castle around 11:00. Now, it began much earlier in the morning but once we ended up on the wrong trolley and took the longer tour around the city of Prague, especially the parts you don’t see from the downtown area, arriving at the castle took a little longer than expected. However, we did arrive after two trolley rides later. And, Kim and Elizabeth got off and I almost missed getting off because the back door was stuck! What a mess that would have been; delaying the visit to the castle even longer. Anyway, luckily I got off the trolley with my sister and headed toward the castle. We took several tours at the castle. The most beautiful was St. George basilica. It’s the second biggest church in Prague Castle. It was built around 920 by a Prince. In 973 a convent was founded next to the church. Mlada, the sister of Boleslav II brought the first Benedictine nuns to Bohemia. The nave of St. George’s basilica has beautiful windows and art work, in addition to housing a crypt underneath. A few other tours included the residence and great hall. We were able to tour the outside of the St. Vitus cathedral but not inside. The outside architectural of the castle is beautiful; the mosaic in the front represents the Last Judgment. Inside the cathedral are scenes from the life of SS. Cyril and Methodius; guess that will be the next visit which is tentatively scheduled around July 4th.

After leaving the castle, we began our journey to The Charles Bridge; awesome, awesome!The bridge is a walking bridge lined with statues and crosses. Although there are various artists along the bridge selling painting, pictures of art, jewelry, etc. it does not distract from the beauty and meaning of the statues. I’m guessing there are approximately 25 statues of saints and crosses. At the very end of the bridge there is a bronze statue of Christ hanging on the cross with St. John the Evangelist and the Virgin Mary on either side. It was said that before losing his/her head the victim knelt and prayed for the last time.
The Charles Bridge took us to the Little Quarter for more shopping and sightseeing. We did a little of each before stopping to eat pizza at an outside restaurant. By then it was after 4:00 and time to start heading home. Before leaving Prague, Kim needed to stop at IKEA to pick-up a few things. The funny thing is, I have never been to an IKEA in the states but have managed to visit two already in Europe, one in Germany and the other in Prague. And, I kind of like their stores. We arrived home sometime around 7:30-8:00 ish. It was a great weekend. Believe it or not, I took 300 pictures. I can’t imagine what I’m going to do this weekend when I spend two days in Berlin. I’m going to attach some memorable pictures of Prague. Hope you can view them.