Prague Castle Tour

We took the team up to the Prague Castle. Within the Prague castle they have built the large gothic St. Vitus Cathedral. It was very spectacular. St. Vitus was an Italian martyred in AD 303 who had nothing to do with Czech or Prague until the good King Wenceslas of the Christmas Carol fame bought a bone from his arm and brought it to Prague as a holy relic in 925. Of course all holy relics require churches to be housed. The present Cathedral was started in 1300 but took 600 years to build. That would make the Transmountain pipeline appear to be on time. Anyhow St. Vitus is the patron saint of dance so on his saint day people dance. I had heard of St. Vitus as some children after rheumatic fever develop a neurological movement disorder called St. Vitus dance named after the crazy dancing people do on his saint day. I had never known this association. The church was pretty good what with the huge Nave, a Mucha stain class window, St Vitus tomb and Good King Wenceslas tomb.

The excitement had only just begun though as we still had the Royal Palace. Madeline told us that they had leaned about the Palace in grade 11 AP history as that was the site of the defenestration of Prague which had set off the 30 year war. In 1618 angry Czech Protestant nobleman had thrown the two Austrian Hapsburgs governors out of the window. She was very thrilled to see the window and send back photos to their history teacher Mr. Robinson. Vladislav hall was very impressive. It was so large that they could have jousting tournaments. We started to flag after that and quickly toured the Basilica of St. George and the mediaeval quarter which was so swarmed with people it felt claustrophobic. We walked back towards the river taking in the Lesser town, Wallenstein garden, the courtyard of the Franz Kafka museum, the Shakespeare book shop, and the Charles bridge which was incredibly busy with tourists. The courtyard of the Kafka museum is noted for the two men urinating statue. We were quite tired so took a team back up the hill to our apartment.Read more