In Czech money, we were thousandaires!
Today we had a few missions of stuff to look at but not many burning desires to 'go into' things. Which made for a nice change, especially since the weather was absolutely stunning (at last!) and almost too hot at times.
We started the morning with breakfast down the road (this hostel was the first place we'd stayed that didn't supply breakfast!) at a little Italian bistro. The breakfast was yummy, the coffee rather excellent, and the price superb (generally food was about the same or cheaper than in NZ, which after coming from Europe where everything is so much more expensive than home it felt like absolute bargain-land!).
The door to our hostel - fairly kooky!
Then we wandered again through the main old streets of the city.
Prague boasted of another mechanical clock that did something exciting on the hour. We got to the clock at about ten minutes to, so we decided to hang around and check it out. While we waited, we got ice cream. The ice cream was better than the clock, and the ice cream was fairly average and over priced. Say no more.
I wanted to check out the Jewish Cemetry – appartently the Jewish population had been forbidden to bury their dead anywhere except on a rather small plot of land and so they had buried them stacked one on top of the other, and managed to cram over 100,000 people there. Sounded like something unique (and very sad) to see.
I kind of thought, being a cemetry, that we would be able to turn up and take a wee look. Unfortunately not so, the whole thing was surround by a huge concrete wall, and to get in you had to by a ticket to their museum and synagogue etc. After expecting free-ness (the guidebook gave no indication that it would cost anything...) we weren't really prepared to fork out NZD $20 each to see it, especially since Greg wasn't even slightly interested. So we moved on.
Back over the Charles Bridge, we headed into a little bookstore called the Shakespeare books, because I was curious. It turns out it was recommended on the map we had because it was full of English books. It was nice to be in a bookstore – or anywhere for that matter – where we could understand everything!
That done, we meandered up the hill in the hot sun towards the castle/fortress area.
The best thing about being on the hill was the amazing views of Prague. It seems I get tired of a lot of things, but never of a good view!
All castle and fortressed out the only thing we had a look in was the Cathedral (because it was free).
We didn't know it at the time, but this stained glass window was designed by Mucha. As it was I loved this window so much I photographed it ten times trying to get a decent photo. Then the next day we learned all about Mucha and it all made sense....
Then we headed over to the Loreta, another Cathedral that was recommended in the guidebook because of it's crazy over the top baroqueness. There was a charge to get in and a charge for the dubious privelege of taking pictures. It seems the Czechs are a bit more prepared to compromise on the idea of keeping community places of worship and remembrence (such as churches and cemetries) free to, well, the community. But given the fact that most visitors are nosy tourists and Czech isn't exactly rolling in dough for the upkeep of national monuments (I presume), I don't blame them too much... I just hope that for the locals there is some kind of card or something they get so they don't have to pay...
The Loreta, anyway, was worth seeing. In addition to the church itself, which was indeed over the top in it's decoration, there was also a shrine to the Virgin Mary which was interesting, a museum of precious things and some old creepy artwork that had been discovered in their catacombs?
Courtyard of the Loreta. In the walkway behind the archways are dedications to saints.
Outside of Virgin Mary chapel/shrine
Virgin Mary shrine - unique in it's red design and wall frescoes.
The inside of the church was fairly mind boggling.
The Bearded Saint.
There was apparently a statue of a female saint with a beard, which we never saw, but there was an extremely girly looking Jesus with a beard if that counts? (ed. note... In hindsight, google told me that this 'girly Jesus' was actually the bearded saint - I was confused because she is depicted on a cross, but it turns out that in addition to the misfortune of growing a beard over night this particular saint was crucified also.)
In the museum of treasures...
Creepy artwork.
After this we were headed back down the hill, nosing in the souvenir shops as we went. We even bought a small painting of Prague.
We wandered through a park by the river then crossed back over to the main city side via the bridge just south of the Charles Bridge.
On the other side we made a beeline to cafe Louvre, our planned lunch stop, as it was after 3pm and we were HANGRY!
Cafe Louvre was a famous cafe where various smart people like Albert Einstein used to hang out when they weren't studying hard at Prague University. It was a really nice place actually and the food was top notch!
Greg's one came with dumplings! I was jealous...
Once that was done it was almost 5pm. We walked over to the train station to figure out train times for the morning. We also poked our head into the Mucha museum, which was closing but we wanted to go there in the morning – we basically just found out the prices, opening times and checked that they took credit card – we were trying to make sure we left the Czech republic having spent all our Kc's but without running out and having to go hungry!
Finally, we headed back to base. We'd had plans to go back to the Czech restaurant again for tea that night but with such a late lunch we ended up just hanging in our room eating chocolate. Our room was such a pleasant place to be with it's little lounge and everything it was great just to relax, knowing we'd seen everything we wanted to see.
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