Prague (Day 3)

Being a Sunday, we knew that little would be open, so we opted for art since most art museums are closed on Mondays.  Wow, are we glad we did!

With very little knowledge of what we were getting into, we decided to look at the local Mucha Art Gallery that was only a few blocks away from the hotel.  It was very impressive.  I swear I've seen some of his art in other places before.  It was a very healthy collection of his works.  Without getting into too much detail, he came late in the Art Nouveau era, but his works were so immediately loved by the world that he continued to do the Art Nouveau style for the remainder of his life, well after it was no longer the popular style.  A native Czech, he was commissioned as a key part of the revitalization of the Czech Republic.  He was used in designing the currency, posters and fliers, did one of the Cathedral stained glass window panels (as mentioned in the previous post), and dedicated 18 of the last 25 years of his life to his masterpiece, the Slav Epic. 

Upon learning about the Slav Epic, we quickly checked to find that it was indeed being shown in Prague within walking distance from the art gallery we were in.  Not only that, but it had only recently been allowed to be displayed because of a decades-long legal battle between Mucha's family and the city of Prague as to who actually had the rights to display the works. 

We made it just in time to see it with time to spare before the museum closed.  It was impressive, loaded with imagery, and also so steeped in folklore that it was clearly obvious that if you were not intimately familiar with Slavic history, there would be little you would understand beyond the obviously HUGE and brilliant works.  20 panels of 20 foot by 20 foot canvas...yes, it was a large room, and the panels felt a lot larger than that.  Each panel represents a key point in Slavic history.

Here is the Wikipedia link, just to give you a general idea of what we saw.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Slav_Epic 

After seeing all of this, it was a little easier to understand why Prague had such an artistic texture to it.  There are so many buildings and nestled spots that have extraordinary artistic detail.  The city clearly has an appreciation for art.

We then had dinner at Klub Architeku.  It is a hidden underground restaurant that is quite lovely in terms of ambiance, service, and food. 

Here are some photos to share of that day...

This was on the corner outside of our hotel.  It's not paint, but a very detailed mosaic.  While we're not sure, we think it's an opera house.  There was definitely a ballet venue in the immediate proximity as well.

 

J loved this statue.  It was on top of a bank, also on the same block as our hotel.

 

Known as the "hanging man," this sculpture was the landmark for finding Klub Architeku.  The man is supposed to be a noted architect, although I couldn't tell you which one.

 

We couldn't take pictures inside the art galleries for obvious reasons, so there were scant pictures taken this day.  The next day, which was our last day, we did a final run around town with more farewell pictures.

Prague (Day 2)

Okay!  Our second day in Prague was intended toward viewing the famous Prague Castle.  Again, as mentioned previously, Prague was relatively unscathed during the second World War, so the vast majority of it is intact.  Here are some pictures we took just getting to the Castle.

 

Looking back, this is Tyn Church (which we never got to see the interior of) with the Astronomical Clock on the left (not very visible).

 

 



I thought this was cool...the city symbol/crest represented three dimensionally!


Naked guys holding up an archway.  The sculpting and artwork was impressive, I thought.

Marionettes are big in Prague.  We thought this archway was cool.  Alas, we didn't see this show.

Here we are outside the gate to the Charles Bridge...the fanciest bridge in town.  We were bundled up as it was 10 degrees F or something like that most of our time there.

 

 

This is Charles Bridge with the castle cathedral in the background on the far right.

 

 

Love locks, an eastern European superstition.  The basic gist is that the locks represent you and your partner's love for each other and that it stands the test of time...or something like that.

 

 

Prague Castle as seen from the bridge.  The walls are actually cut off in this picture on both sides...it's that big!

The bridge is lined with a lot of religious statues and memorials.



 

This was one of my favorite statues.

 

 

The Italian Consulate.  We also saw the Romanian Consulate and I think the French Consulate.

 

The Castle gate guarded by the Czech Army.  J thought they all looked like they could be models if they wanted to as they were all young, fit, and attractive with really good smiles.

 

The entrance to the castle cathedral.

 

It was pretty huge in there.

 

And lots of huge and ornate stained glass windows.

A bit of history here.  As was common at the time, in the late 1800's early 1900's, the castle as many other castles in Europe, was in a state of disrepair as the city did not have the funding to maintain it.  One man, who still owned a portion of the castle by inheritance, started a campaign to renovate and repair the castle.  Many of these stained glass windows were created as part of that campaign, as well as much of the restorations and artwork now stored in the castle.

This window was done by commission from Alphonso Mucha, the celebrated Czech artist.  J and I loved this one the best and didn't realize its history until a few days later.  We learned a lot about him on our last day, so I won't spoil things.

Here are some of the panels...

J liked the stained glass work a lot.  Here is one she really liked as well...

 

They also had actual relics of saints, such as...

 

Ok, I'll stop the cathedral tour with my favorite sculpture there...

 

One interesting culture quirk is that although the temperature was similar to that of the outside (definitely below freezing), men were required to take their hats off while in the cathedral.  As you can see, I was not enjoying that part.

 

Here's another view of the exterior of the cathedral...

 

We also toured the main hall where the king discussed matters with his court. 

 

We visited the convent (sorry, we didn't see any nuns).

 

 

Surprisingly, I can't find pictures of the remainder of our excursions that day, but we also toured the castle grounds and the army tower.  Lots more art, culture, and history there that I sadly can't post much about.

 

We had pizza at some crazy underground pizza restaurant where there were pictures and sculptures of an underwater theme with lots of topless Hindi-looking mermaids.  It was good pizza!

 

One of the last things we saw was a small bit of what we thought was an Orthodox Christian Mass...complete with very, very ornate icons and statues, incense, and an entirely incanted service with the heavily robed minister having his back to the congregation.  We felt a little self conscious about taking pictures. 

Prague (Day 1)

Hello All!

Sorry for the sabbatical I have taken from this blog.  There has been much to post, but my time has been spent doing things rather than posting about them lately.  I've finally reached a lull in activity, so now is a good time to update.

As per my last post, J and I went to Prague.  It was more of an on-the-fly thing, but it was fun.  We were also excited because we got a nicer DSLR camera and very much looked forward to the pictures we could get from it.  We were not disappointed.

Driving there was interesting as it was snowing and dark.  We got there in one piece, but there were a lot of snow warning signs on the autobahn.  Crossing into the Czech Republic was cause for nerves as the road conditions were bad and everything was written in Czech, so we didn't understand anything we read on the road. 

Good thing for the Garmin (which started to die on us on our way home).  We wouldn't have been able to navigate through Prague without it.  We also chose to purchase a parking lot space for our stay.  It came out to $35/night, but it was worth the piece of mind.  We stayed at the Meteor Hotel Best Western.  The staff was friendly (and bi- if not tri-lingual) and the hotel was clean, but we still chose to lock our laptops and valuables in the office vault when outside of the hotel.  We were admittedly a little more paranoid than usual, but Prague has a reputation for pickpockets.

As it turned out, given that it was mid-January, one of the coldest months in Prague, it was relatively barren for such a touristy town.  The split seemed to be roughly half-tourist and half-local.  It was very easy to visualize 20 or even 50 tourists per local with how extremely spacious town square was and how busy certain sights were even in the coldest of cold days.

Our first morning was largely dedicated to getting the lay of the land.  Our hotel was near the "Powder Tower" so that was our first stop, also because that was where the hotel-recommended ATM was.  Again, we were paranoid because a lot of local exchanges tack on 3%-10% exchange fees, so we didn't want to lose more money than we had to.  The Czech Republic uses the Krone and not the Euro, so the exchange rate was 20 Krone to 1 American Dollar.  There is also no such thing as a Krone cent, so it was an adjustment seeing everything in hundreds and thousands.  It also made it tougher to determine if something was expensive or not.

NOTE:  These pictures are from links to my wife's album.  If you cannot see these pictures, please let me know ASAP.

 

The Powder Tower...pretty cool.  Darker sandstone with golden statues all over it.

 

One of the cool things we learned about Prague is that it was relatively undamaged by World War II bombing, so unlike many other grandiose cities of its time, Prague still has a lot of its pre-WWII glitz and glamour.  This really works in its favor for its castle, cathedral, sizeable Jewish Quarter, and a very Edwardian Architectural look on its central boulevard.

 

The very second sight we saw was the main square.  This had the Astronomical Clock, a couple large churches, and a Jan Hus monument.

Prague town square.  From left to right:  Town Hall (Astronomical Clock just hidden from view on the left), Jewish Quarter, St. Nicholas Church, a Jan Hus monument, and some huge museum.

 

The famous Prague Astronomical Clock.  We did manage to get a video of it when it struck the hour.

 



It was at this point that our camera battery died.  We immediately purchased a replacement battery (we bought two at my request) and shortly after found that it was the temperature, not so much the battery, that was causing problems.  Our camera has a built-in safety to not operate below 28 degrees Fahrenheit.  It was close to 15 degrees Fahrenheit at the time.  We managed to fully recharge all three batteries during the course of the rest of this day and resumed our sightseeing with iPhone pictures.

 

We wandered toward the center of downtown since we had purchased our new batteries there, and saw the Wenceslas Statue (Wenceslas is the Patron saint of Prague we gathered).  There was also the famous Prague museum which was under construction.  There also happened to be a converted Soviet Center we took a picture of as well.

Prague museum under construction.

 

 

Wenceslas Statue

 

 

Converted Soviet-Era building





A view of the downtown boulevard from the Wenceslas Statue.  I was particularly keen on the seemingly Edwardian-Style roofs on the left.

 



We wandered toward the Jewish Quarter mostly out of curiosity, and got quite a surprise. 

The synagogue that literally gave us more than our money's worth.

We purchased what we thought was a tour of the synagogue we were located at to find out we purchased a tour of all of the Jewish Synagogues in Prague.  It was a very extensive tour with a lot of history involved.  It was also just us and the tour guide, so it ended up being a personal 3 hour tour.  Pictures were not allowed, but we learned about the synagogues and their basic functions, the history behind a Jew who had the rare opportunity to get high political status thus saving much of the Jewish Quarter from typical destruction, the lore behind the Golem as a Prague Rabbi is the only Rabbi rumored to have actually created one, and the discrimination history of Jews.

The final item was of great interest to us.  It turns out that Jews have been regularly kicked out of cities or persecuted for one thing or another throughout European history.  Our tour guide explained that it was because of this that Jews offered little resistance during the WWII ghetto rallying.  Up until the mass executions, everything up to requirement to wear a star of David was just another repeat of history.

Another neat piece of the tour was the Jewish cemetery.  Hundreds of thousands of graves stacked on top of each other crammed into a little space, most with their own tombstone.  Symbols on the headstones have special meanings.  Two hands, for example, is for a very special person who is considered to be a great healer.

Our contraband picture of the graveyard.

Our tour ended us at the Kafka statue.  Prague holds a few people in very high regard.  These people include King Wenceslas, Jan Hus, Alphonse Mucha, and Franz Kafka.  I'm not sure on Jan Hus, but the rest did live in Prague for a significant amount of time and had a profound effect on the style, personality, and history of the city.

Kafka statue

The swanky part of Prague, all located in the Jewish Quarter.

I read about a good restaurant for dinner with a good flair for local cuisine called the Ropemaker's Wife or U Provaznice.  Aside from the strange title, we were very interested in local cuisine.  We did not know what we were in for...statues and pictures of risqué topless women and lots of charactures of well-endowed men completely covered the walls.  The food was fantastic, and it was definitely a local favorite.  J and I were just taken aback at the abundance of bare breasts and large penis implications on the walls...aside from the fact that no one seemed to care.

I was told to smile for this picture, not at all aware of the statue included behind me.

I was quite entertained by the "rescue" soup.

Czech food = awesome meat, fat, and bread = awesome!  I think this plate offered four different types of meat alone.

You can research this yourself online, but the basic gist is that was back in the day a very famous ropemaker in Prague married one of the most beautiful women in Prague.  She truly loved her husband and was faithful to him even though men openly flirted with her.  The ropemaker was becoming so successful with his trade that he started travelling a lot, leaving his wife rather lonely in Prague.  She asked her husband for money to build a bar to keep her busy, and he consented.  Her bar quickly became very popular as the local men could both drink and flirt with the beautiful wife.  Rumors began to spread that she was being unfaithful to her husband, rumors which were untrue, but they soon reached her husband.  Upon his next return, he hung his wife with his own rope out of anger at her supposed infidelity.  The local lore is that her ghost will continue to roam the pub until all those who suffered for love are healed.

On our way back to our hotel room, I was taken aback at the diversity of languages advertised: Czech, English, Russian, German, even Spanish!  We also found three consulates: one for Italy, one for Romania, and one for France.

One other thing we liked was all of the space in the streets and in the stores.  Being in the off season certainly had its perks.  It was very easy to imagine how crammed things could get in the high summer...and how uncomfortable and hot.

This was all only Day 1.  There is more to come!