One of my new favorite cities

Prague is incredible... which I knew it would be going in. However, today it became even more clear that we'll really need to come back here and maybe stay about five days. We started the morning earlier than everyone else... Tyler, Brett and I left the hotel at 7:15 to go back to Charles bridge before the hordes of crowds would arrive. Seems like this is a successful idea wherever we go. Similar to Rothenburg, there were much fewer people crowded on. We enjoyed the view and snapped some great photos. We also saw two brides/grooms on the bridge. Wedding photos at 7:30 AM? I wonder what time they had to wake up!! Then it was back to the hotel to meet everyone else for breakfast. There was another wide array of "continental breakfast" options (quite a bit more extensive than what continental breakfast is at home) and we each had a hot item (for us eggs Benedict).

Our walking tour was with David, an Englishman who has lived in Prague for 12 years. We spent from 9:30-5pm with him leading us through the main parts of the old city. We started by crossing a different bridge north of the Charles bridge which gave quite a nice view of the bridge itself. He then took us to the Jewish quarter and explained lots of the architectural styles of the buildings. We also walked down Parizska street which is the high end shopping district with lots of designer stores. This brought us again to the old town square that we had visited before, but this time we learned more about the history of the Tyn church. It is unusual that the front facade is completely covered by some relatively undecorated buildings built directly in front of it. Apparently when one religious order conquered the other they built these buildings to spite the old ruling church. Can't quite remember what religions... maybe Catholic and Protestant. Also in this square is an astronomical clock. Very interesting although we couldn't really read the clock. Apparently they blinded the man who made the clock to avoid another city getting the technology to have an astronomical clock.

Next we walked into the Tyn church which was absolutely beautiful. We had been seeing signs advertising evening concerts in the churches and this one included The Moldau. We decided to buy tickets to go in the evening. Seemed to be a very fitting thing to do! Especially since we had been talking about and listening to that piece yesterday!

We walked into another church known to have a thief's arm hanging from the ceiling as a warning to future potential thieves. Next we headed to a Kubist style building. We went to the second floor for a quick cup of coffee. Tyler and I had Turkish coffee (strong and with the grounds in the coffee). Next we admired another city tower (apparently this one was previously the powder tower). From there we walked to see the National theatre which houses the Smetana hall. In the basement there's an interesting 'American' bar. It's what you might imagjne an early 1900s fancy North American bar might have looked like. We walked through this and carried on. We covered so much ground in one day.

Next we walked through the famous Moser glass exhibition gallery and store. Incredible carved glass details and of course very pricey. Certainly makes the glass souvenirs sold everywhere else look poor. If you want to buy glass in Prague, Moser is the place to go but you would need to be planning for a large purchase to get an heirloom piece. And then shipping it home safely too!

Next we got to Wenceslas square and then back to the Havelske market. Tyler and I held up there for a couple extra minutes to buy a painting of Prague. We picked one that is definitely recognizably Prague and Tyler managed to haggle the price down by 100 crowns. It's all rolled up and we'll have to get it mounted once we get home and put it up!!!

Lunch was at Cafe Slavia - Tyler had duck and I had beef goulash. Yummy as usual. Our afternoon tour was mostly to be at the castle/palace area. We took tram #22 to get to the area. We elected not to buy tickets to go into any of the buildings so we'd have time to see more, but we did walk into the amazing gothic cathedral, St. Vitus. While on the grounds, someone important must have arrived. There was a band playing and the hourly change of the guard was delayed just long enough for us to actually get to see it.

Following this, we walked through the area surrounding the palace to the Strahov monastery (which unlike our hotel's monastery is still an active monastery). We sampled some St. Norbert beer brewed there (an amber beer for Tyler and I).

We started walking back down the hill to the main area but stopped for a photo where there's a great panoramic view of the city. We continued the long downhill walk all the way to Charles bridge. We wanted to make one last stop at the Lennon wall (sounds cool right? Something Beatles related). We got there and saw it... really just a bunch of quite ugly and often profane graffiti. I decided that was the only ugly site I saw in Prague. Especially after seeing the East side gallery in Berlin which was quite profound and meaningful. Anyway, if that's the only underwhelming thing in Prague, I think I won't hold it against this lovely city.

We said goodbye to David, then Tyler, Brett and I headed back up the hill for another trdelník. Tyler had caramel again which was an awesome choice. Instead of a dessert treat, I opted for a small glass of hot honey mead. It was a bit of a walk to go back to get that but was totally worth it. I'd like to say it helped with my cough but that's probably not true.

We headed back to the hotel to rest a tiny bit and freshen up for the evening. Next was the concert! We walked back to the old square. The girls stopped at a botanical store thinking we might want to get something. All of it was really smelly in an earthy way and not quite our style. The boys may have been surprised to see we had made no purchases when we joined them in the seats. The concert was lovely. We even got to hear the pipe organ from the back of the church (a bucket list item for Tyler). The Moldau was definitely the highlight but it was just overall quite a special experience. After the concert, it was raining a bit. Tyler and I held back to take off his sweater to avoid it getting wet. When we got out, everyone had disappeared! We weren't sure if they were nearby so we didn't want to move too far. We had also talked about maybe going to a nearby Italian restaurant for dinner. Tyler went in that direction to look and I stayed by the church in case someone came back for us. Tyler and Kelly crosses paths and we headed to the restaurant.

Two beers and two pizzas drained us of our last Czech money pretty much exactly. We are coming home with one crown to keep as a souvenir... I guess we were quite accurate on how much cash we needed!

Today is our record so far for number of steps in a day... 30000! (That did include an extra few minutes walking around our hotel complex once we realized we were close to that number but not quite there).

It was a very full day in Prague but we definitely got an overview of the highlights of Prague. I hope to be back for more exploring! Tomorrow we'll be back in the van to commute to Nuremberg to board the boat!!!

Brooke & TylerRead more