Sadly we only had one full day to
spend sightseeing and exploring Prague.
But we definitely made the most of it.
In the morning we made our way to
the central square. We grabbed
some breakfast and then wandered through the tiny, winding roads, checking out
all the beautiful buildings and statues.
By pure luck (although we say it was perfectly planned), we found the
city’s clocktower at about 10:45.
What’s cool about this clock tower is that there is one clock that tells
the actual time, and another, completely separate astrological clock. This clock indicated where the sun and
the moon are, what season it is, what day of the year it is, and on the hour
every hour a comical, satirical “play” happens. The four evils (greed, death, vanity, glutony) are represented by
little statues. The skeleton of
death rings a bell, they all start dancing, and the windows above them open. The 12 apostles make their way through
the windows, while music plays in the background. You can also wikipedia "Prague Astrological Clock" for a more accurate and in depth description
Astrological Clock
We then walked over to the St.
Paul bridge and checked out all the statues. There are over 30 statues all along the bridge, each
representing different saints, apostles, and holy people. We had a beautiful view of the castle,
the river, and the city from the opposite side.
St. Paul's Bridge
It was nearing noon, so we quickly walked back to where we
planned to meet from friend from Loyola.
Aly is here studying in Prague all summer, and we decided that we
definitely needed to see each other.
She had set a meeting place at “Wencelas Square”. We arrived and it was a 5-6 block
square with tons of people. I was
worried we wouldn’t be able to find her.
We walked towards the main statue and I finally recognized her. It was so much fun to see parts of the
city with a friend from back home and to have someone who’s been in Prague show
us around the city. She showed us this "monument", actually a grave of a 20 year old who was killed by the government as he protested against the communism in the 60s. He is buried in the spot he was killed, right across the street from the statue symbolizing the country's freedom. Learning these facts and their historical impacts was very very interesting.
This was
actually her finals week of the first session of classes, but for her language
course the professor was having the class go out to lunch together and having
them order in Czech. They were
nice enough to include us, so Kristin and I joined the class for a traditional
Czech lunch. We were the only ones
who had to point at the menu.
Everyone else helped translate for us. It was really bizarre at least for me to be in such a large
group of Americans because I haven’t heard that much English all at once for
over a month and a half. Part of
me was partially frozen, haha.
Beer with our lunch
After lunch we said goodbye to
Aly and headed over to the castle.
We discovered that what we thought was the castle was actually the
church in the royal city. We strolled
around this gated in city, exploring the little museums, the inside of the
beautiful church, and also the actual royal castle.
We also walked down Golden Lane, a street of tiny houses
where villagers who contributed to the life of royalty lived and performed
their duties as seamstress, doctor, healer, geographer etc…
The Castle
On our way back down the hill towards the river, we had some amazing views of the city:
Views of the city
Along the way we tried this interesting and delicious sweet
bread that they make. It’s almost
like a pretzel in that it’s crunchy on the outside but soft on the inside. They cook it over a fire and the dough
constantly rotates. It’s sprinkled
wit sugar and served warm. A perfect
mid-day snack. We wandered a bit
more before heading back to the apartment. To reach the metros, you must take the escalators. They were super super long and it was almost dizzying. And according to Aly, they used to go way faster, but in order to join the EU, they were mandated to slow them down! I can't imagine racing down this escalator!
We packed up our bags in preparation for our (very) early morning the
next day before heading out to dinner.
We again found a place that served salads (after a rich lunch) and was
also broadcasting the Czech-Portugal game. Czech, like Holland, lost to Portugal. We can’t decide if
we’re good luck for Portugal, or just bad luck to whichever country we’re
in. Either way it was again a
great atmosphere to be in (minus the cigarette smoke) and fun to get to watch
some sports.
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