Enter Prague, one of the most beautiful cities I've ever seen. Like most of Europe, packed with fascinating history- much of which is just so obvious as you roam the streets. Our host was so hilarious and nice, and in his broken English managed to tell us about some of his favorite restaurants to check out. One of his reviews included him throwing his arms up in the air and growling like a gorilla, to which our response was..."Ohhhh, rowdy- sounds like a happening place! Cool, we'll check it out." After spending an embarrassingly amount of time trying to convert Euros to Dollars to Korunas (repeat, repeat, repeat), we made our way on the bus into Old Town for some dinner. As we approached the restaurant, we peaked into the window and indeed, there were cavemen......literally it was a caveman and gorilla themed restaurant....needless to say, we ventured elsewhere.
Highlights of Prague were mostly seen via Sandeman's Free Tour- these are SUCH great tours and I highly recommend them to anyone who goes to a city where they are offered. We saw so much, including:
The famous astronomical clock which was first installed in 1410 and STILL works, not only to tell you the time, but the date, position of the sun/moon and every hour on the hour does a little show including all 12 of the apostles and a singing crow. To think how many years it's been doing that... pretty crazy!
The Estates Theatre where Mozart's Don Giovani was debuted.
Jewish Quarter One of the coolest things to me was the Spanish Synagogue which represents a very rare time in history when there was peace between Jews and Muslims, and it is very apparent via the Islamic design...of the Synagogue...
Old-New Synagogue (name due to an unfortunate German mis-translation), the oldest working synagogue in Europe build in 1270. Story has it that a rabbi made a Golum out of clay and that every Sunday, the rabbi would let the Golum rest. One Sunday, he forgot, and the Golum became furious, ripping up trees and breaking things. They put him in the attic and he is apparently still there, nobody has been brave enough to go see if this is true, after a WWII Nazi soldier went in and never came back...
Jewish Cemetery (we saw the tribute to it in Berlin), founded in 1478. People had to be buried on top of each other due to lack of space given to the. There are about 12 layers and around 100,000 people are thought to be buried there.
It ended with some beautiful views of the Prague Castle.
We did our own walk through the GORGEOUS Lesser Quarter based off of a cool thing that we found through National Geographic's website, which has been cool to have. Through this, we saw one of the most beautiful parts of Europe I've ever been.
On Karmelitska Street, we found a tiny door (#25) that we were able to walk to the back of and if we had been there earlier, we could've seen the beautiful garden where there's apparently some more great views of the castle. We strolled through Maltezske Namesti (Square of the Knights of Malta) with the stunning Maltese Order's Church of Our Lady Below the Chain. Just to the right of the church ,we found the Lennon Peace Wall, which became a space in the 80's after Lennon's death, where people would spray things like "give peace a chance" and the police would cover it up the next day. We crossed a bridge over the Certovka stream and our breath was taken away as walked towards Charles Bridge for views of the the Old Town. STUNNING.
Did I already say that this city is BEAUTIFUL??
Great pictures and good commentary. Love them all.Hope you have a ball in Vienna. Have a Streusel for us.
ReplyDelete