Prague

Further comment about our hotel room. There is a glass shower cubicle within the room on one side, and on the other side and behind a frosted glass door is the toilet. Very weird. There is a humongous, beautiful wooden headboard. There was only some random sports channel on the TV, broadcasting in English. The bed is the squeakiest bed we've ever slept in, and you only need to move slightly and there's a heck of a noise (no comments, thank you)! Jan and Steve report the same. And the room above us obviously had the same issue as well as a very squeaky floor. But the inhabitants of the room above were obviously very active in bed, morning and night!

Our hotel provided breakfast similar to the one in Rome - ham, cheese, yoghurt, fruit, bread rolls, buns and cakes, with tea and coffee.

Jan and Steve suggested we try and book one of Rick Steve's recommended Guides for a walking tour the next day. So, I emailed Katerina of Praguewalker to see if this was possible at such short notice.

After this, we were heading up the hill to Prague Castle just before 9 am with Rick Steves' book as our guide. Our hotel was very well located for the Castle Quarter, and it was barely a 10 minute walk, with some great views on the way. The city was quite hazy though. We walked into Castle Square and saw the changing of the guard at the castle entrance. We then walked under the fighting giants above the gate and headed through the courtyards to find the recommended information office to get tickets for the main sights, as well as an audio guide. Unfortunately, the audio guides were not available. Luckily we had Rick!

We went first into the Roman Catholic St Vitus Cathedral (Katedrala Sv. Vita). It contains the tombs and relics of the most important local saints and kings, including the first three Habsburg kings. Construction was started in 1344, but was stalled by wars and plagues. It was finished in 1929 for the 1,000th anniversary of the death of St Wenceslas (no, that's not the same person as 'Good King Wenceslas' in our Christmas Carol. The Cathedral is a combination of Gothic and Neo-Gothic, but isn't the dark, black kind of Cathedral that some have been on our trip. David and Steve were keen to climb the spire, but it was closed.

Beside the Cathedral was an obelisk that was erected in 1928 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the establishment of Czechoslovakia (note, this is now split into two separate countries - the Czech Republic, and Slovakia). Apparently this granite obelisk was originally much taller, but it broke in transit - not a good start!

Next we moved on to the Old Royal Palace where we weren't allowed to take photos of the large hall that was big enough for jousts (though I did take one). Even the staircase was designed to let a mounted soldier gallop in. Of further interest was the Czech Office where, in 1618, angry Czech Protestant nobles threw the two Catholic Governors and their Scribe out of the window. Actually, an old law permitted defenestrations (throwing people out of windows when necessary)! Amazingly, they survived the big fall in this case, but the nobles were eventually all killed in retaliation and to be made an example of. This is what started Europe's Thirty Years' War between Catholics and Protestants.




Next we visited the ancient Basilica and convent of St George, built in the early Romanesque style. From here we moved on to Golden Lane, a street of tiny old buildings built into the arches of the castle walls. We saw one house where Kafka had lived. Some others had interesting displays and stories to tell about the inhabitants of years ago. Above the houses you could walk along the internal part of the wall where there were displays of medieval armour. We went down inside one of the towers to the dungeons - nasty stuff!

Finally, we made our way back through to Castle Square, and grabbed some more photos, including the Black Plague Monument. We headed back to the hotel where there was a reply from Katerina saying she had Tereza available to take us for a 3 hour walking tour the next morning - the rate was 75 Euros total for the four of us for the 3 hours, very good as some charge that per person! We grabbed some lunch at a nearby cafe. I ordered an omelette but it was so ginormous I couldn't eat it all! The others had grilled baguettes. Then we headed down the hill from the Castle Quarter/Little Quarter where we were staying, across the famous Charles Bridge that crossed the Vltava River, and over to what was originally the Jewish Quarter (Josefov). The Charles Bridge is pedestrian only, but it was very, very crowded.

We joined a short but slow-moving queue, standing in the heat, to purchase our Jewish Museum tickets (plus paid a little more for me to be able to take photographs in the Jewish Cemetery. The Jewish Museum Pass enabled us to visit several different museums very nearby. First was the Pinka Synagogue, a site of Jewish Worship for 400 years. However, now its walls display the handwritten names, birth and death dates, and Concentration Camps of the 77,297 Czech Jews who were sent from here to the gas chambers. I had tears in my eyes and had to choke back sobs as I walked through here. There was also a display of drawings done by Jewish children, who later perished in the Terezin Concentration Camp, near Prague. Just terrible...

Next we entered the Old Jewish Cemetery, with 12,000 tombstones all crammed into a tiny space. From 1439 until 1787 this was the only burial ground allowed for the Jews of Prague. Hence, tombs were piled on top of each other in several layers.




The next part of the tour took us to the Ceremonial Hall where there were displays on the Jewish purification of the dead and burial traditions.

The Klaus Synagogue was a museum devoted to Jewish religious practices and rituals. At this point the skies opened up and the rain absolutely bucketed down. We sat for a while, but there was no letup. We weren't carrying our raincoats, so we had no shelter, and didn't want to buy umbrellas to lug around. So eventually we made a dash to the last two stops on our Jewish Museum tour. First, the Old-New Synagogue that was built in 1270 and is the oldest synagogue in Eastern Europe (and its original floor level is below street level). We didn't find it very interesting. Then finally onto the beautiful Spanish Synagogue with sad displays of Jewish History, particularly during WWII - all terribly sad. We couldn't find the Maisel Synagogue, and it was so wet and we were so tired that we decided we'd had enough. I was just about beside myself with thirst, it had been so hot and we'd been on our feet for so long, and we dragged ourselves back to our hotel through the rain, with no coats. The rain didn't matter because we were so dripping with perspiration from the heat.

I was in such a bad state by the time we got back, that I guzzled 7 glasses of water one after the other, and shortly after, my typical bad headache from lack of water struck. That was the end of me, and I stayed in the dark hotel room with my eyes shut while the others went nearby for pizza and pasta for dinner.