|
Prague, Czech Republic
Day 3: Monday, May 24, 2004
Click
here for a printer-friendly version of this page (no images)
Our first full day in Prague brought
surprisingly blue skies! We headed down to the breakfast room not sure
what to expect. To our surprise there was a very nice breakfast buffet,
complete with meats, cheeses, rolls, yogurt, etc. Touring the castle was
chief on our agenda for today and we wanted to get an early start to avoid
the long lines of which we'd read. So, we were out the door by 8:00. The
main square was very empty and few people were up and about the city (certainly
no tourists at this early hour!). The Charles Bridge was empty and we
enjoyed the freedom to take photos of it without people being everywhere.
We crossed the bridge and headed up a long flight of old stone stairs
that led to the castle, where we found several tour groups already in
evidence. Definitely good to get there early!
 |
| The gate
to Charles Bridge. |
 |
Charles Bridge,
around 8:30 a.m. Nice and quiet!
The castle is at the top right of the photo. |
 |
| Us on Charles
Bridge (taken by a friendly Japanese couple). |
We bought our tickets and toured the cathedral,
which is one of the nicest we've seen in Europe.
The castle grounds include a cathedral, residences and other associated
buildings. A portion of the castle also serves as the main offices of
the present-day leadership of the country. For some reason we decided
to climb the cathedral tower (all 287 steps). We thought the steps would
never end, but finally we reached the top and had a really nice view of
the castle compound, the Vltava River, and the city. The small circular
staircase is very narrow and has two-way traffic, which made the climb
up and down challenging and left us gasping at the top and dizzy at the
bottom. While at the top we noticed that dark clouds were on the horizon
and it looked like we were likely to lose our beautiful blue skies.
 |
Looking out
over Prague and the Vltava River from the vantage of the castle
cathedral's tower. Charles Bridge is in the center. All those steps
were worth it! |
We toured the rest of the castle buildings, including
a small house where the writer Franz Kafka lived, and then walked back
through the castle gardens to the front gate, where we witnessed the changing
of the guards. Then down the "little quarter" main street, replete
with its hordes of tourists and tourist shops. On our way back to the
old town we crossed the Charles
Bridge, now teeming with visitors
and various vendors selling their wares. Quite a difference from the morning!
 |
| Street scene
near the castle. |
It was getting late and we hadn't found any
place to grab a quick lunch, so when we passed a KFC we decided to stop
in and get lunch there (95ck each). While some travel purists may ridicule
us for occasionally eating at an American-style fast-food restaurant,
the fact is that they are one of the few quick places to eat when you
are on the go and you want to sit down out of bad weather. Plenty of Europeans
seem to feel the same way, and we've found that the food in the European
versions of places like KFC and McDonald's is usually much better than
their USA
counterparts. We rarely eat in fast-food restaurants in the USA,
but aren't as opposed to it in Europe. Besides,
we eat at enough non-touristy places to balance out a few fast-food indiscretions!
After lunch we wandered over to the Jewish Quarter (Josevof).
Most of the sites in this area require the purchase of a ticket/pass.
We really were only interested in seeing the cemetery, and it was getting
late, so we decided not to purchase the pass. From Josevof we found our
way to the fashionable Parizska
(Paris) Street, with big-label fashion boutiques and beautifully redone buildings.
 |
| Parizska
(Paris) Street in Prague, with newly redone and ornate building facades. |
We stopped back
at the pension briefly to regroup and relax for a bit, then went back
out to buy maps for our bike ride the next few days. We went to several
outdoor and bike stores (conveniently, right near our pension), but none
had all the maps we needed. A bike shop employee directed us with very
sketchy hand directions to a map store. We weren't optimistic about finding
the place, but we wandered off in the general direction he suggested and
miraculously found it in a locals-only shopping district. It had most
of the maps we needed, except for the one covering the area around Prague (which everyone else was out of, too; the clerk
explained that it was backordered from the company).
After the map
store we wandered around a bit more and found a bakery where we procured
an enticing-looking rum-flavored whipped-cream pastry that we split while
sitting on a bench in the middle of Wenceslas Square. Although it’s called a "square,"
it's really a large boulevard flanked by all manner of stores and hotels.
It was hard to picture thousands of Czech citizens clogging the square
in 1989 prior to the Velvet Revolution and the end of the Communist
regime.
On the way back
to the pension to drop off our maps we stopped in another book store and
found that they had one remaining copy of the Prague-area Shocart bike
map, which we bought. Had dinner at a touristy restaurant near the main
square, where we ordered a fixed-price menu with goulash. Again, an incredibly
small portion of meat, but tasty. They also tacked on the "cover
charge." After dinner we headed back to the room to pack and get
ready for our early train the next morning.
Daily costs 5/24
(in CK): Pension: 1400; lunch: 190; dinner: 400; snacks/drinks: 45; castle
ticket: 440; biking maps: 440; postcards: 28. Total: 2943 CK ($112 US).
NEXT
PAGE >
|
