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.