Our trip to Prague!

(Written on Wednesday, June 3)

We are now on our way back to Vienna after spending nearly two days in the historic and beautiful Old Town Prague.  Here are my impressions of the city:

1. Prague is bombarded with English-speaking tourists, mainly Americans and British.  There are way more tourists here than there were in Vienna.

2. People really embrace the "Bohemian culture" of living freely and with indulgence.  We stayed in the heart of Old Town Prague where many of the tourist attractions are and walked by countless absinthe shops, dance clubs, and theaters.  There is a vibrant night life, so people stay out really late and wake up in the late morning.  It is relatively safe to walk around at night as long as you're watchful of pickpockets.

3. Streets are lined with absintheries, marionette shops, jewelry stores specifically selling Czech garnet stones and crystal, and businesses providing Thai massage services.  I was amazed at how frequently we saw these types of stores.

Absinthe ice cream, anyone?

One of many Thai Massage parlors we saw.

Apparently Czech garnet is very well-known.

...and Czech crystal.

Interior of creepy marionette store.

4. Old Town Prague is very old, and although occupied by Germany in the 1930s and 40s, was relatively untouched during World War II.  Subsequently, many of the cobblestone streets, bridges, churches, and other buildings have existed since medieval times.  In fact, the entire town is a UNESCO World Heritage site so people have gone through great lengths to preserve the history in the area.

One of many super old towers we saw.

A newer, shinier building (see the Nova Scena sign on the bottom left?) juxtaposed with
the reflection of a super old building across the street.

A really old water wheel that looked pretty.

A beautiful obelisk/statue.

5. Prague is full of talent street musicians.  And we're not talking about crappy musicians that otherwise can't make a living in the music business.  These are people who are vastly experienced and love what they do.

Really talented street musicians we saw performing on our first night in Prague.

6. It seems like Prague is well-known for their beer (Joe's favorite was the Velkopopovitsky Kozel) but it seems like each restaurant/bar only sells a few types of beer.  Specifically, tons of places only sold the Czech Pilsner Urquell (which we avoided).  This is very unlike restaurants and bars in the US, which tend to sell a large variety of drinks to customers.

The Kozel beer that Joe really liked.

A summary of our activities in Prague:

Day 1:  

We arrived here on Monday, June 1 -- Joe's birthday -- via the Ceske Drahy (or the CD) train.  It took about four hours to travel from Vienna to Prague.  The train ride to Prague was seamless.  The subway system in Prague is extensive and runs efficiently -- in fact, more efficiently than the Vienna trains.

We rented a room in an old private residence built in 1411.  Situated close to the Old Town Square, the first floor functioned as a restaurant and bar, while the few floors above offered guest rooms to tourists passing by.  After dropping off our luggage in the room, we walked down to the historic Charles Bridge, built in 1357.  We think this might have been the first bridge built in Prague.  The Charles Bridge is covered with old statues and offers picturesque views of the Vltava River and parts of Old Town Prague.  There are tons of vendors selling paintings and souvenirs, as well as street musicians, all along the bridge.

A view of the Charles Bridge during the daytime.

A picturesque view of the Charles Bridge just after sunset.

After grabbing a birthday drink for Joe at a cafe along the river, we meandered through a large park, where we stumbled upon some bizarre statues of crawling babies. Cerny, the artist who created these statues, apparently has other works on display in and around town.

Weird baby statue designed by Czech artist Cerny.

Joe hanging out on one of the weird baby statue.

For dinner, we settled on a "Czech-style" restaurant (in quotes because the entire area was full of tourists, so it's unclear how authentic the food was).  Czech cuisine seems to heavy on grilled and smoked meats and sweet and sour vegetables, such as red cabbage.  Similar to what we saw in Austria, doughy dumplings are also quite common.  Pork cheeks, knees, knuckles, and necks seem to dominate many of the restaurant menus we saw in Prague.

Lots and lots of meat surrounded by two types of dense dumplings.

Day 2:

The second day, we walked around Old Town Square, where we saw the Old Town Astronomical Clock (the oldest functioning astronomical clock in the world).  There is a little performance done at the top of each hour so we stayed for that, but were relatively unimpressed by it.  It was a cool looking clock, though.

The oldest astronomical clock in Old Town Square.

Astronomical clock face.

Old Town Square of Prague.

We also visited the nearby Lennon Wall, which some local Prague artists decorated after John Lennon's assassination in 1980.  The wall was covered with art promoting Lennon's message of world peace and love.  The Prague authorities promptly painted over it, but local artists kept retaliating by painting more murals.  I think this happened a few times, until eventually, the Prague authorities gave up and let the artists do whatever they wanted.

Part of the Lennon wall.

Part of the Lennon wall.

Afterwards, we walked to the Prague Castle, which was situated at the top of a large hill close to Old Town Prague.  A nearby museum explained the history of the Prague Castle, starting with the first settlers in the Prague area between 6000 - 3000 BCE (!!!).  The first Slavs settled in what is now Prague Castle in the 9th century, after which the Kingdom of Bohemia was established.  Interesting relics from ancient times, the medieval era, and modern times were on display.  It was really a neat experience!

A view of Prague Castle from the Charles Bridge -- it covered a HUGE area and sits on top of a large hill.

A view of the Prague Castle at night.

A view of Prague Castle at sunset.

Afterwards, we walked through St. Vitus Cathedral. This medieval church is dedicated to St. Vitus but also honors St. Wenceslas, the duke of Bohemia in the 10th century (a popular duke, Wenceslas was actually killed by his power hungry brother, who then sainted him to gain the likes of the people and become more powerful).  Also, yes, this is the same Wenceslas from the Christmas song, Good King Wenceslas.  St. Vitus features elements from Gothic architecture -- the gargoyles, high arched ceilings, and stained glass.  We took the 287 steps to the top of the south tower, where the cathedral bell was located.  The top offered 360 views of Old Town Prague, and just beyond it, newer, more modern parts of the city of Prague.

An outside view of St. Vitus Cathedral.

Stained glass in St. Vitus cathedral.

Typical of Gothic architecture, gargoyles lined the exterior of the church.

View from the top of St. Vitus Cathedral.

Also, it turned out lots of people had been buried in a huge cemetery lot next to Prague Castle.  Many of these bodies were excavated and some of the tombstones were on display inside nearby St. George's Basilica (also a really old church).  A few skeletons were also on display in the Prague Castle museum, which totally creeped me out.

An old tombstone dug up from somewhere around the Prague Castle district.

You could literally spend days at Prague Castle because there is so much to see, and we only scratched the surface.  Nevertheless, we were satisfied with what we covered and headed down the hill to one of the small islands in the middle of the Vltava River.  On the way, we stopped at a small cafe to grab a refreshing lemonade, which actually just turned out to be seltzer water infused with mint leaves and lemon and lime wedges.  It seemed somewhat similar to those flavored La Croix drinks, but much fresher.  I think I might try to recreate a pitcher of fruity seltzer when we return to the States.

Refreshing "lemonade."

The two islands on the Vltava were accessible by bridge and had a few walking paths, boat docks where people could rent paddle boats and canoes, and restaurants for people to enjoy.

A picture of us on Shooter's Island.

View of the two islands in Vltava River.

After walking around part of Shooter's island (one of the two in Old Town Prague), we grabbed an early dinner at an Uzbek restaurant nearby.  (While we enjoyed Czech food, it was, as I mentioned, a little more meat-heavy than we're used to.)

The menu featured lots of rice and soup dishes with lamb and beef and was somewhat reminiscient of Persian cuisine.

Delicious Uzbek dish with lamb and quail eggs in rice.

Delicious Uzbek dish with lamb and greens in noodles.

We also decided to try a red absinthe.  Neither of us knew what that was, except that it involved absinthe, so we decided to give it a try.  Our waitress asked us if we wanted fire with it.  We eagerly obliged, not knowing what we were getting ourselves into.  Shortly after, one of our servers came by with a small amount of red liquid, presumably absinthe.  He held a spoon full of brown sugar just above the glass, lit it on fire, and mixed the fiery spoon in what was undoubtedly a very potent drink.  Eventually, the fire went out, and with his limited English-speaking skills, the server told us to wait a minute to drink the absinthe.  He emphasized that we should drink it quickly like a shot.  Both of us are too old to take a shot of anything these days, so we both sort of politely took small sips of the drink once the fumes subsided.

Absinthe that we ended up splitting.

After a nice dinner, we headed to the nearby St. Francis Church for a musical performance featuring a trumpet player, a soprano singer, and an organist.  On the way, we ran into an absolutely delightful trio of street musicians.

There were tons of these concerts being advertised by little cathedrals around Old Town.  For anyone visiting Prague, I absolutely recommend going to one of these concerts -- the performers are incredibly skilled and passionate about what they do (the musicians at St. Francis each had multiple degrees from academies and conservatories in and around Prague).  Also, there are very few things more moving than hearing talented and passionate musicians perform in a place of worship.  Aside from the stunning acoustics (can you imagine the pristine sound of a soprano voice reverberating in a cathedral with high ceilings??), seeing people express their spirituality through the power of music is just touching.

Here is a short video of part of their performance.

What a great way to end a day!

Day 3: 

We had a limited time to walk around since we were taking the afternoon train back to Vienna. In the morning, we briefly stopped by a fountain designed by Cerny (the same Czech artist mentioned earlier) where two male statues can be seen peeing messages in a small pond.  Apparently you can text some number to specify these messages, but we didn't see a sign.  By the way, Prague is full of bizarre statues like this.

Peeing fountain statue.

Since we didn't get a chance to go the day before, we decided to hike up to the top of Petrin Hill.  The top of Petrin Hill features gorgeous gardens, a small cathedral, and an an observatory deck modeled after the Eiffel Tower (we skipped this since we saw spectacular views of the city from the Prague Castle).  A large "hunger wall" (almost looked like a castle wall) surrounds much of Petrin Hill and was constructed by King Charles V.

*Side note: While on Petrin Hill, we heard an ominous city-wide siren that sounded much like a notification of a bombing of some sort.  Turns out, yes, it was an air raid signal, but it was a routine test that is done on a monthly basis (similar to the American emergency broadcast signal -- "this is only a test").  It scared the bejeezus out of us, even though everyone around us seemed completely unfazed.

The view of Old Town Prague part way up Petrin Hill.

An old chapel on Petrin Hill.

Part of the huge rose garden.

Giant peony in one of the gardens.

In the rose garden! You see more of the purple lavender-like
flowers than roses in this picture, I suppose.

Almost at the top of Petrin Hill.

Some stairs on the way up Petrin Hill.

Not sure what this was but it was reminiscent of lavender and smelled amazing.

A semi-bird's eye view of one of the gardens we walked through close
to the top of Petrin Hill.  

The observation tower at the top of Petrin Hill, constructed
based on the Eiffel Tower.

Feeling a little tired from the hike up to Petrin, we had a long, relaxed nice lunch at the bottom of the hill.  Since we kept seeing restaurants advertising pork knees, necks, and knuckles, I insisted that we try at least one of these before we left.  Turns out, pork neck tastes just like mouth-watering thick cuts of bacon.  I guess this makes sense, since large pigs tend to have fatty neck jowls (sorry, pigs).  Joe and I ended up sharing a large platter of various barbequed meats, including chicken wings, pork ribs and neck, and sausage, and a large salad.  Although, to be honest, the salads and vegetable dishes here tend to be doused in sauce and fat to cover up the actual taste of fruits and vegetables, which makes us giggle (but also crave fresh produce).

We enjoyed one last gigantic meat platter before leaving Prague.

After a relaxed lunch, we took one last walk around the city, including to the historic National Theater, before picking up our stuff and heading to the train station.  We are excited to head to Rome tomorrow evening!!

The National Theater in Old Town Prague.