Friday, 28 September 2012

Prague Day 2

We were intending to go and hop on the 11am walking tour but when we woke up at 9am it was pissing down. I can conclude from this that it is not possible to accurately forecast the weather anywhere. I would have thought continental Europe would have been OK, but no.

At about 11:30 the rain had all cleared up so plan B was actioned: go and see the Prague museum then go to the 3pm walking tour. We wandered down the road only to find that it was closed due to renovations. Dukes. Across the road was another museum so we tried to get into that but there was a conference on there. Double dukes. Now we had a couple of hours to kill before the 3pm walking tour. So off to meander aimlessly we went. We went out and over the tourist bridge (Charles Bridge) where there were far too many people trying to sell charactitures. That killed about 20min. Somehow we whittled away the time which seemed to only include walking around in circles and a coffee with some tasty apple strudle slice thing.

At 3pm while we were waiting for the tour to start I took a photo of all the people waiting for the clock to do its thing. 


During the walking tour the guide said a couple of things about the clock and, as I suspected, it was a bit more impressive than it appeared. It is a 24 hour clock and also tells the astronomical time (star sign stuff). The mechanisim is completely mechanical and is still mostly original from 600 years ago. All of the wee guys represent something or someone and the dudes that pass by the windows are the 12 apostles.

The walking tour was really good (as usual) and showed us around the Jewish quarter and lots of other bits of the city. The main thing I took away from the tour was that Czechs really enjoy throwing people out of windows (called defenestration). Unfortunately I had judged the weather conditions poorly and only worn shorts and a T-shirt so I was a luttle but (little bit) cold but I decided it would be good to acclimatise to the weather in Vancouver anyway. We went up to the Prague Castle (which has the largest castle grounds in the world) and got some really cool views of the city:



The entrance to the castle grounds was pretty imposing with one dude clubbing the hell out of another dude and some other dude knifing another dude. Basically just dudes killing other dudes. I think that is more intimidating than sculptures of lions which everyone else seems to use.


In the gardens we found this which was kinda strange. From one side it looked like a guy taking a leak but when we came round the front of it we saw that it was a guy forcefully holding a lions mouth open to make water come out of it. I have never seen water jet from a lions mouth so I don't think this would work in real life.


We made a quick stop at home (to get warmer clothes) before going to check out the climbing baby TV tower. Yup, you heard right, there are statues of babies climbing the TV tower. Yes, it is as disturbing as it sounds. Unfortunately it was too dark to take a photo but I'm sure if you google "climbing baby tower" you will find it. We went up the tower to have a look out over the city at night which was OK. Kinda getting sick of looking out over cities from towers. After the tower we went to a restaurant called "U Sadu" where the kitchen is open until 2am. We got kicked off the outside seating part and had to go down into the basement which was a bit shit as you are still allowed to smoke in bars here. We sat in the very smokey room but fortunately our meals were very tasty. I had chicken and pork medallions with matured cheese on top and baked potatoes with garlic sauce for 205 CZK (about $12 NZD). For dessert we had milk cheese and honey ice cream which came in wee ceramic pots which Emma will keep and make delicious desserts in when she gets back to Kiwiland. I think we got shafted on the bill again (we had them try to add an extra beer at another place). Only about 200 CZK though so not a worry but we will be extra vigilant next time. Hopefully honest mistakes. We also found quite a good beer called "Kozel" and has a sweet picture of a goat drinking a beer. Quite cheap for only 29 CZK for 500ml.

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