Monday March 16, 2009
I really wish I could have visited Prague a few years ago, bc now it is kinda a tourist trap haha! It's become very westernized but it still retains most of it's old world charm. Our day in Prague started out on our bus. We picked up our tour guide for the morning and headed up to the castle and st vitus cathedral. Our guide today was from Denmark but lives in Prague during the busy season. The cathedral was started in the 14th century and took like 600 years to be completed. I think it was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I'm so glad I spent too much money on my camera bc my photos of those stained glass windows will be worth it. The castle or palace was kinda lame, but the location gave a fantastic view of the city below. The we walked down about a million steps, thank god we started up there and didn't have to walk up to it later! Prague is very hilly, which I think makes it more beautiful and scenic, but it also can be a huge pain.
So we walked down and around a few corners to the famous Charles bridge. It's a walking bridge across the Vltava river from the lesser town to the oldest parts of the city. On the bridge are several people selling things and drawing pictures. Not so much today bc it was wet and drizzling, but normally. The story of the bridge is that this king didn't trust his wife and he wanted her priest to tell him if she had confessed anything. The priest refused and so the king had the priest thrown off the bridge, and when he hit the water five stars flew up from the spot. Some locals pulled his body from the rice and buried him against the kings wishes. Many years later catholic officials needed saints for the Czech people so they canonized that priest, dug up his remains and placed them in the cathedral, and put a statue of him on the Charles bridge. Now they saw that if you touch a certain place on his statue and make a wish it will come true :)
After we walked across we turned and headed towards the Jewish quarter. We turned down another street into the quarter and a few blocks later arrived at the old town square. The weather was finally starting to clear up but it was still wet which means slippery cobblestones :( I felt like bella swan in twilight, super clumsy! At least I didn't trip or slip and my camera survived the day. In the square there was another st vitus church, beautiful but not nearly as grand as the first, another church, the astrnomical clock and what was left of city hall. At the end of WWII CZ was occupied by the Germans and the Czech people thought they were about to be liberated by the Americans so they picked a fight with the german soldiers that ended up lasting a few weeks and killing like 6 thousand Czechs before the Americans got there. All that's left of the city hall is a little piece of wall connected to the astronomical clock tower.
The astronomical clock was cool, I don't think anyone knows now how it really works. It keeps track of moon cycles, the days and months, and every hr it puts on a little show. According to our guide the government didn't want the man who made the clock to go to another city and copy the clock so they gouged his eyes out. Yuck! The show was cute and we took a movie of it, but during the show is prime pickpocket time bc all the tourists are too busy looking up at the clock show and taking movies to mind their bags. We caught a couple at work during the noon show, they were very good looking haha. After the show we had free time so our whole group went back across the bridge to find a pizza place we had passed earlier, but half the group wanted to walk up that giant hill to look up there. Um, why are we walking all the way up there to get the same tourist pizza we could get down here? There were a few others who just wanted to eat and not go back up the hill so I became the adult in charge, scary, and we turned on our heels and found a sit down pizza cafe. They led us down to the basement/dungon to a table big enough for the whole group. The room we were in was awesomely tacky. It was decorated like a cave under the sea! The pizza was delish though. So we figured out how many crowns everyone owed and we headed for the bridge to meet up with the rest of the group.
Then the whole group made our way back to old town across the Charles bridge, but first we stopped for photos and to touch that statue of a saint and make a wish :) as we headed back to the jewish quarter one of the girls and I decided we really wanted to see the jewish cemetary, where over 100,000 Jews were buried over hundreds of years on top of each other bc they were only allotted a tiny area of land in the city in which to bury their dead. Since only a few of us wanted to pay to see it, we broke off again and I was the adult in charge. First we had to find an ATM or a change place to get cash for tickets to the cemetary. That was interesting. Then we entered the cemetary, and I'm so glad we did that. It was such a special place in the midst of a bustling city. Some of the graves there were marked from the 1400's and I'm sure there were older. After walking through the cemetary we did a little souvenier shopping in the area before heading back to the old square to hang out and pretend like we live here.
Then it was off to the crystal store to look around, and ally wanted to look at the garnet jewelry bc Prague is known for crystals, amber and garnets. She bought a cute little ring for 1200 crowns, only 60$. We bummed around the square taking photos and going in random stores after that till it was time to meet up and head to the bus, thankfully parked closer than where we had left it! Back at the hotel for a quick rest before dinner and then a few rousing rounds of apples to apples and me playing big sister to all the girls. They wanted to know about what I did at bl and how college was and things like that. They all tell ally how lucky she is to have a cool older sister come on this trip with her. I think they just like having a not so adult adult around. :)
Ok that's all! Sorry it was a freakin book! We didn't even do everything there was to to in the city! And I definitely must come back in the warmer months!
Jenny
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