幾鬼秘的部落格

I woke up at 5am this morning planning to go to Charles Bridge again for some sunrise photos.  But the sky was completely clouded, and my body was sore with aches.  So I went back to sleep.  Our flight back home was not until 12:50pm, so I feel a little guilty for not making the most of this last day of our trip.

We’d planned to take the metro to Dejvicka to take a bus to the airport.  But we decided at the last
minute to take a taxi instead, not knowing the frequency of the bus.  It really helps that the standard of living is relatively cheap in Czech.  Taking a taxi is around 60 times more expensive than taking the bus, but still very affordable by our Canadian standards.  Plus, with the four of us, there is no better time to splurge.

On our way to the airport the taxi passed by the Dancing House, the only sight on my list that we did not see.  It was quite out of the way of all the other sights, and having seen it now, I don’t think it would’ve been worth the trouble.

As many of our friends had told us before we left for this trip, Czech is truly a beautiful country.  Of all the European capitals I’ve visited, Prague is my favourite.  I walked on Charles Bridge and around the old town so many times these past few days but never felt bored.  While the weather was not the best, it was way beyond my low expectation as the forecast had called for a mainly wet week.  We never even pulled out our umbrella once!  If you haven’t been to this country yet, you should definitely czech it out

This morning I woke up earlier than 2 days ago, just after 5am, to give myself more time to go to Charles Bridge for some sunrise photos.  The sky was completely dark and I couldn’t tell whether it was cloudy or clear.  It didn’t matter.  Even if I couldn’t see the sunrise I still wanted some more photos of the bridge with no one on it.

I took a few photos of the bridge with the street lights on, before they were switched off exactly at sunrise, at 6:50am.  The sky was completely cloudy so I didn’t stay long on the bridge.  I decided to go to the castle area again, the Golden Lane in particular, to take some pics without a crowd.

According to my original plan we were supposed to visit the Karlstejn castle today, which is less than an hour train ride away from Prague.  But having been somewhat disappointed by the castles that we’ve visited in Czech so far, CL and I decided to stay in town as there are still places that I still
want to visit (going up the Old Town Hall Tower, the Lesser Town Bridge tower, seeing the Dancing House) while BH and CF went to a flea market for some souvenir shopping.  I was quite happy with this decision as soon as I was up on top of the Old Town Hall Tower, as I have no doubt that the photo ops that it offers are far better than those at Karlstejn, especially under this cloudy sky.

Time flew by and before we knew it, we’d spent a good few hours around the old town square!  CL and I walked to Charles Bridge, still undecided as to weather to ascend the other bridge tower.  I decided that it was too dark to take any good photos, so we headed south along the Vltava to the National Theatre area for an early dinner, as we only had desserts for lunch earlier.

Two nights ago we’d already gone into this cafe/restaurant but stepped back out because it was filled with smokers.  This evening we went back to find that the restaurant is actually in the basement, beneath the cafe.  We went downstairs to find an empty place with the only one waiter dozing off.  He brought us to a table and professionally set the utensils with excessive precision.

The restaurant’s decor is very chic and we had the whole place to ourselves for most of the evening.  The food was forgettable, which probably explains the reasoable price.

We walked along the river back up to Charles Bridge, stopping at one spot for a good half an hour for some photos.  It was very windy and cold and I had a hard time placing my long lens on the thin rail for the long exposure shots.  We walked though the old town for the Nth time and went shopping at a local supermarket before heading back to the hotel.

Today we had our day trip to Kutná Hora, one hour east of Prague.  We went to the main train station to buy our tickets.  They were so cheap that we had to go to an information booth to confirm that they were indeed return tickets, and not one-way.  Even after seeing many many gambling
places on the streets both in Prague and Český Krumlov, seeing a casino in the train station was still a surprise.  Within the one hour train ride the weather went from bright and sunny to windy and snowy.  Once we arrived at Kutná Hora we walked ~15 minutes in blowing snow to the bone church.  By the time we arrived at the church, it was bright and sunny again with perfectly blue sky.  It was quarter to noon, 15 minutes before the church closes for a one-hour break.  We questioned whether we’d be kicked out at noon, but decided to go in anyway, and come back again after lunch in the worst case.

I was reminded of a similar church that I visited last year in Evora in Portugal while reading the description.  But this church is in fact quite different in that almost all the bones were used in decorating, rather than in building, the church.  Perhaps that’s the reason it appears more impressive.

After our visit to the church we walked to the Kutná Hora town center in around half an hour.  The walk seemed longer as we weren’t quite sure where we were going at times :)  After lunch we walked around town, including a visit to the local market run by Vietnamese, supposedly the largest minority in Czech.  The market was not impressive and did not match our expectation according to the guidebook.

The finale of the day was a visit to the St. Barbara.  The approach on the artificial bridge with its Charles Bridge-inspired statues would’ve been even more beautiful if it wasn’t for the scaffolding on one side of the church.  The golden evening light shining on the other side was fading fast so I hurried and took a few photos before entering the church, just 15 minutes before closing time.  Photography wasn’t allowed but nobody seemed to care.  People even used flash when snapping their photos freely.  So of course I whipped out my camera as well and started snapping away

It was getting pretty darn cold and windy by the time we were ready to head back to Prague.  I was pretty sure none of us wanted to make the 1-hr trek back to the train station on foot, but I didn’t know how we could get a taxi.  Just as we passed by the hotel at the end of bridge, CL decided to walk in and ask them to call one for us.  And within minutes, we were in the taxi zooming through the narrow streets of the old town center to the train station.

After the disappointing castle visit in  Ťreboň, we’d skipped the guided tour of the Český  Krumlov
castle.  From its size alone, one would think that the Prague castle should be a more interesting visit.  The castle complex consists of many sights - St. Vitus Cathedral, St. George Basilica, Old Royal Palace, Golden Lane.  So as a whole, there were a lot more to see.  The Old Royal Palace is what I would consider to be the castle itself. While not completely uninteresting, its rooms contain no explanation in English, so it’s hard to appreciate what we were looking at.  In retrospect we probably should’ve bought an audioguide.

Quite unexpectedly, today’s highlight for me was in the Strahov Monastery’s library.  Besides the many beautifully illuminated works of literature in display, the library contains a number of cabinets showing animal specimens, the most memorable one being the extinct dodo bird.  After this visit CL and I separated from BH and CF as they wanted to go shopping for some arts.  We headed back to the castle as I wanted to go up the St. Vitus Cathedral’s tower to take some photos of the many bridges spanning the Vltava River.  But as my luck would have it, the tower was closed the very minute that we arrived.  So, we left the castle and headed back for Charles Bridge.  Before we got there, as we went past St. Nicholas Cathedral, we noticed that this church also has a tower, and it was still open.  So up we went.  But we were a little too late.  Even though it was not yet 4:00pm, the sun had almost completely set behind Petrin Hill.  Half of the city was already under the hill’s shadow.

We met up with BH and CF again at the base of the Charles Bridge tower around 5pm.   We walked to the New Town around the National Theatre area looking for dinner.  Afterwards, we went to a Tesco supermarket for some fruits, snacks and water before heading back to the hotel.

Today’s first stop was the Old Town Square.  We arrived before 10:00am and it was relatively quiet.  After watching the astronomical clock do its thing at 10, we visited Tyn Church, which is probably the most Baroque church that I’ve seen.  Then we saw the huge chandelier in St. Nicholas before heading to Josefov, the oldest Jewish settlement in Central Europe.  Next stop was Charles Bridge, for me the highlight of the day as I took numerous photos from the top of the tower.

After lunch we continued our tour of the Lesser Town with a visit to the other St. Nicholas Cathedral.  This was followed by an uphill stroll along Nerudova Street, and many other side streets populated by foreign ambassies.  Our last stop in Lesser Town was the John Lennon Wall, a memorial to John Lennon decorated with graffitis of Lennon’s portraits and messages of peace.

We ended the evening with more window shopping in Old Town, again.  But wait, there was one more surprise before our day ended.  At the end of every meal we always have to play Sherlock Holmes with the bill to figure out who ordered what as the waiters would simply write down a list of the items’ prices, without the items’ names, and often grouping multiple items into one sum.  As usual, we took the longest time doing the math, but this time, we couldn’t come up with the correct sum however we tried.  We finally had to ask the waiter and lo and behold, we were told that there was a cover charge of 30Kc per person!  30Kc is actually not much by our Canadian standards, but it’s more than 2 metro tickets in Prague!  We’ve had a few meals in Prague since we arrived, and had never heard of this.  But as we would later find out, this is actually not uncommon.