"Prague, Czech Republic" Prague by edwis

the pissing man art statue

We were feeling pretty adventurous for some local dinner selections, so Joan after warming up with two wines, shocks me and orders a rabbit breast wrapped around a bacon and spinach mixture. I point to a local specialty on the menu, which has a not too helpful English translation of “a special meat blend.” I go for it and the dish turns out to be beef, veal, pork and chicken chunks in savory gravy of onions, mushrooms and cabbage, served with potato pancakes. It was quite a meal and with 4 wines, 1 beer, some bottled water and our two full dinners, the bill comes to $28.56 US! As I am doing the calculation for a tip, the waiter (husband) comes over and says “no, no, it’s all complete.”

The next morning the desk clerk tells us how to take a local bus to the city center. First you have to buy your bus ticket at special kiosks located around the town. However we find Mrs. Fawlty to be gracious enough to sell us two bus tickets from her private stash. We walk about 2-3 blocks to a bus route and find that the bus runs every 8 minutes and then connects with an underground tram for a short ride into the main city. Now we are ready to explore for the next 4-5 hours.

As we departed the train station and came up from the underground, we crossed a street coming upon some ‘Cow Art’ in front of some large grandiose museum complex with a nice plaza, gardens and green walkways. Joan being from Wisconsin immediately feels at home and enjoys this display. We find out that this is part of an open-air art exhibition in Prague featuring more than 200 brightly colored life-size cows.

The motto of the exhibition was "Cows show us what we are really like".
We had to take several pictures here in varying poses.

Walking round we find great historic buildings, a grand old town section with lots of tourist, little hidden alleyways, some canal streets, and the grand palaces. Old Town has been working heart of Prague ever since the 10th century. Many of buildings have Gothic insides and Romanesque basements. The buildings received its Baroque face in rebuilding in 17th and 18th centuries after a huge fire. It is known as the city of 100 spires, and you get some great views from up on the hills.

It seems that there is some cultural music concert being advertised for almost every night of the week. Many of the buildings and homes are painted in very colorful hues, adding to the quaintness of the city. We follow a little ‘city walks’ handout map and found the Prague Castle which is the most visited sight in Praha and goes back to the 9th century. It has always been the seat of the Czech rulers. I liked the royal guards who change every hour and then stand stiffly at attention the whole time by the gates. The changing of the guard at noon time is very ceremonial with full music and elaborate marching.

This very large castle complex contains three courtyards including a Gothic landmark called the St Vitus Cathedral with some beautiful gardens. In one of the chapels the Bohemian crown jewels are deposited in a special chamber.

One nice little neighborhood which is called Mala Strana (the Small Quarter) is squeezed on a hill between the Prague Castle and Vltava River. We roamed the narrow streets finding Renaissance buildings, Baroque churches and more palace- type buildings. A very picturesque part of the Mala Strana was the Kampa. Here was a park where the young people hang about playing music and pretend to be hippie flower children. There is even a wall dedicated to John Lennon. This actual island area is called Praha's Venice because the buildings seem to rise straight out of water canals. We never even considered that there were all these pretty canals in Prague.

street mime

The most famous bridge in Praha is the Charles Bridge with Towers from around the year 1400. It is really nice walk across the bridge which has 30 different sculptures adorning it. You can admire the Baroque statuary, see grand views up and down the river. A tower forms the entrance to the Charles Bridge coming from one side. While there seems to be always a crowd of tourists and locals hanging about, the scenery is some of Praha’s best.

It started to drizzle that afternoon for a while, and that gave us opportunity to seek a little refuge in a jewelry shop that featured garnet jewelry. I really blame the weather and rain for Joan’s souvenir purchases of a garnet stone necklace and matching earrings. Hey, but we stayed dry.

Another good memory of Praha is that while we were walking down a quiet little alleyway, we came upon a non-descript wine shop with a blackboard sign out on the sidewalk. We recognized the word ‘vinem’ and went in for a glass of wine. We find a neat little place with five tables for sitting and the shop featured about 75 local Czech wines by the glass. The young lady owner was so pleased that we came in and sat down, she couldn’t do enough for us. She recommended a very pleasant white wine for us to try, and of course we ended up buying a bottle to take along with us. We talked and talked, having 4 glasses of wines; she also brought us out some crackers and cheese, and bottled water. As we were getting pretty looped during this mid-day stop, as we tried to settle up the account, she brought us some homemade ‘mulled wine’ to taste which was a cloudy concoction being poured out of a pitcher that had a cloth lying across the top of it. The bill for all this, including a good bottle to take home, came to $15.50 US.
With nice prices like that, I thought we should move there soon. While we enjoyed our wine afternoon, we learned later that Praha takes beer drinking very seriously; in fact, they consume more beer per capita than any other city in the world!

We just happened to turn into an art school’s parking area by mistake and come upon a full life sized bronze art piece. It was of a gentlemen standing upright in a suit, hands in his pockets, and there was a stream of water flowing out of his exposed male organ into a little pond at his feet. Some little kids and I had some good giggles and laughs together. Walking by a wedding dress store, we discover there was a live model mannequin / white faced street mime in a wedding dress, who would move ever so slightly every few minutes or so. Was it live or was it Memorex? Joan also went crazy and we spent a lot of time viewing the many Bohemian crystal glass shops.

Although the gratuity was included in all food bills, we found a little token tip was nicely received. While we only touched the surface of visiting Praha, we would welcome a chance to spend a couple of more days there doing further exploration.