BFT23 - The Sights of Prague

 

On our first full day in Prague we decided we were going to check off a few of the things that you’re supposed to do in Prague as a visitor, and since that included meals we headed out bright and early for the local farmer’s market.

Not too early. It was vacation after all.

And not too bright, really, since it rained most of the day.

It was the Vacation Day of Theseus, I suppose, but it was the thought that counted and we had a grand time, so there.

We looked up the route on our trusty GoogleMap machines, found a tram that would get us close, and then walked the rest of the way to the farmer’s market in a light rain that made us glad we’d bought those umbrellas at Wenceslas Square on our first evening in the city.

The market sits right by the river, and it was hopping as you would hope a farmer’s market would be. There were booths selling produce. There were booths selling baked goods. There were booths selling cheeses and meats. There were booths selling a fair assortment of alcohol – some of which was bottled for later, and some of which you could just get your day started with right then and there, which is always a surprise for Americans as for all the alleged moral decrepitude of the modern US it is still a fairly strict Victorian middle class place in many ways. It was pretty much everything you could want in a farmer’s market, all in a language that none of us happened to speak. People were pretty nice about it, though. Most people in Prague can speak at least a little English, and they’re often willing to do a bit of impromptu translating for those who can’t – a happy generosity that we were glad to benefit from. This is how Oliver and I bought our cheeses, as I recall.

We split up when we got there, with Kim and Lauren heading off into the depths of the market while Oliver and I stopped at the first place we saw that looked like it sold something we wanted to eat for breakfast. This happened to be a sausage booth.

Oliver and I did a bit of pointing and handing over of coins and eventually we found ourselves in possession of our meals. I got one of the big sausages, and Oliver got one of the smaller ones, though eventually he did go back for a big one too, as they were really good.

The booth had a small tent to the side with a table you could stand next to and eat your sausages out of the rain. You will note that this meal did not come with any utensils. You ripped the sausage apart with your hands and dunked it in the mustard, and if you felt particularly adventurous you could tear off a hunk of the bread to go with it. It was very good, though rather napkin-intensive. There were a bunch of us under the tent, and a Norwegian guy across from me struck up a conversation. Apparently he visits Prague on business a lot – he works in the paper industry, as I recall – and he really likes the city. We confirmed that we liked it too, so far, and apparently that’s all you need to have a perfectly lovely conversation with a stranger over a sausage.

Eventually Kim and Lauren had sausages as well. They were really good sausages.

We walked the length of the market for a while, pausing to admire the strawberries at one booth and the various things floating by on the river. Eventually we found another tram that took us to Wenceslas Square for a bit of shopping, and then it was on to the main attraction for the day – Prague Castle.

The Castle sits perched above the city, as you would expect with something designed to be both a visible symbol of power and a defensible fortress, and like everything else in Prague it is accessible by tram. We found the tram we wanted, got on, and about a stop later we were joined by the entire population of Spain along with their tour guide. They were friendly and polite so it wasn’t a bad ride but it was rather crowded and once we got off we made sure to walk ahead of them as we made our way up the hill and into the Castle grounds.

The Castle isn’t just one building. It’s an entire complex of buildings, encompassing several churches (including an entire cathedral), a Royal Palace, more than one pedestrian square, and a lane full of little shops, apartments, and assorted knick-knackery. There’s a lot to do there. We found our way to the main entry area and bought our tickets.

Our first stop was St. Vitus Cathedral, which is an incredibly impressive place and the first time I ran into one of the more intriguing things about being a tourist in Prague. In several of the places we visited I would go to the entry point and show my ticket to the person working there and they would immediately point to the camera hanging on a strap from my shoulder and convey, by word or gesture, that photography was strictly forbidden. I would of course agree with this prohibition – otherwise I’d have had to stand outside – and enter the site, only to discover that everyone and their idiot twin brother had their phones out, merrily snapping photographs without any sort of restriction or consequence whatever, and then I would join in. It was a little dance we did. I’m not sure why they singled me out other than that I had an easily identifiable camera – though, given advances in phone cameras, mine was neither the most sophisticated nor the most professional quality device there – or why, given the general lack of enforcement, they bothered with the charade of telling me I couldn’t take pictures. Perhaps it was a holdover from the old days of Soviet occupation, when the mere impression of doing a job was sufficient. But for whatever reason this act was performed at a fair number of the places we visited and I still came home with a wide variety of photographs which I am happy to reproduce here.

It took us some time to find the end of the line to get into the Cathedral, but eventually we did – it snaked through several courtyards and at least one tunnel, but it moved quickly enough. We all took photos as we got closer, since the Cathedral really was a lovely thing, and eventually they let us in.

It’s really big. We’d just been to the Basilica of St. Paul in Vatican City, which was bigger and which, in an astonishing display of pettiness, very carefully noted just how much bigger with brass inlays in the marble floor of the Basilica itself, but you can’t help but be impressed with St. Vitus.  We all took a pile of photographs, prohibitions notwithstanding.

It also has some interesting architectural features.

And a lot of just random things to see, ranging from religious artwork to statues of St. George the Elongated, to various bits of other things.

Off to the side there were several small, ornately decorated rooms, most of which you couldn’t get into because they were blocked off, but we looked into them anyway because somewhere in the Cathedral there is a door with seven locks that is only opened once every eight years or so. We never found it, but we had a good time looking for it. 

 

[EDIT: Kim says she found it.  It's in the room in the second photo below, just out of frame on the right.  She even says she told me about this at the time, which I will not deny.  This is the danger of taking so long to get things written down, I suppose.]

There was also this thing, which has to be the gaudiest thing I’ve ever seen and I’ve been to the House on the Rock. It’s even more so in person, as it seems to go on forever and every time you think you’ve gotten a fix on what it looks like you move slightly and a whole new vista of baroque excessiveness opens up before you. It. Was. Fascinating.

What really stood out about the Cathedral were the windows. The place is just covered with vast and ornate stained glass windows, each one more impressive than the last. Some are old and some are new. At least one was designed by Alphonse Mucha, one of the leading figures in the Art Nouveau movement and an artist with an entire museum dedicated to him in Prague which we went to a couple of days later. They’re all astonishingly gorgeous.

What else could we do but try to get in on that?

We left the Cathedral, though not without admiring the outside a bit more. The mosaic was bright and shiny on a grey day, and the iron figures on the gate represented the seasons.

From there we went into the Royal Palace, which was impressive enough but kind of suffered after the Cathedral. After again being summarily warned against taking photographs, we were allowed to go inside where we found ourselves in a big empty room with a path that led around it, surrounded by people taking photographs. There was a hallway that led off from one corner into some display areas full of oddities – notably a large green oven-like thing that stood in one of the little rooms.

The more interesting part was a small set of stairs that went up from the big room and led you to a records room where the government used to meet. It was full of old books and on the ceiling were the seals of various families who were required to register themselves, and it was quite impressive. There was also a replica set of the Czech crown jewels for those who wished to see them.

At one point we found ourselves outside of the Basilica of St. George – an ornate building on the outside, but a rather austere one inside.

We also stumbled into a small lane with shops and houses along the side, which was a pleasant way to end our time there. We visited a few of the shops – including one where Franz Kafka used to live, which I will get to in a separate post – and slowly made our way down the lane to the end where there was a former house showing an old silent movie about the various things that had happened there.

By this time we were hungry for lunch, and while we never did find the café we were looking for we eventually ended up in this place, which provided good food and interesting things to look at, and again we were impressed with how helpful the people working at these places were when it came to avoiding food allergies. 

From there we walked slowly down the hill, back toward the rest of the city and the Charles Bridge.

The one Required Element that I had for Prague was to walk across the Charles Bridge. I’m not sure why this made my list, other than the fact that I grew up in the Cold War and for much of my early life this was my impression of the Iron Curtain – a grey, foggy bridge across a slow river in an occupied country, a bridge lined with impassive statues and so thick with spies passing secrets that they were probably waiting in lines to do so. The accuracy of this impression was somewhat debatable even at the time, but there you have it. It was something I wanted to do, and since it was also a functional bridge that would take us from where we were to where we wanted to be it seemed like something that would serve multiple purposes.

We walked over to the Castle side of the bridge, through cobbled streets and various shops that we poked into, and then we found ourselves at the foot of the bridge. You have to climb up from the street level to get to it, but once you’re there you find yourself at a whole other street level.

On one side of the tower there is a thriving city street, and then you go through the archway under the tower and you’re on the bridge.

It’s a big, wide bridge full of pedestrians now. The spies have moved on to more clandestine spots, and even on a grey rainy day there was no fog, just people walking past the art. We had some discussion as to whether the art was original or reproduction – it turned out that most of it was original, but some wasn’t – and we took our time slowly ambling across, admiring the scenery and the river below.

Eventually we reached the end of the bridge and passed through the tower on that side.

It wasn’t the most dramatic part of our visit there, but I enjoyed it. Now I can say I have walked across the Charles Bridge, and that made me happy.

From there we took the tram back to our apartment for a siesta, and eventually went out to get dinner at the pho place down the street from us.