Bratislava – Day 10 – And Prague

Prague is utterly overwhelming, in terms of the amount of history here, building after building, street after street, neighbourhood after neighbourhood chock-full of incredible buildings. And it’s absolutely slammed with tourists. I do not remember when I was last in such crowded conditions. In some ways, it feels like a theme park.

We started the day at the Café Melvin just down the street from our hotel. It had a beautiful old interior, but it was a lovely morning and we enjoy eating outdoors so we ate on the wide sidewalk out front. One of the items on the breakfast menu was “Hemenex”. Try saying it out loud. “Ham and eggs” 😂

We are right at the top of a steep hill. We walked down this morning to the Charles bridge, about 2km. Along the way, I was constantly stopping to take pictures. It can be difficult to take pictures because the buildings are tall and often quite close together. Prague does not feel like a city that has had a war on cars, yet. They seem to be littered all over the place, except in the main Square and a few streets around there. However, they did mostly seem to be parked, and when they were driving, they had to be very careful because of the cobbled, and narrow streets.

Here are a very few of the pictures that I took before we were arrived at Saint Nicholas‘s Church.

The church looks quite plain on the outside, and is attached to other buildings on the left, but is quite incredible inside. They charged an admission fee of 100 Czech crowns, which is about $6.50. It was worth it. When I visit large churches, I always want to go to the upper levels, but they are rarely open. It was a treat to be able to climb up to the second level in the Saint Nicholas today.

The Charles bridge is the most beautiful bridge in Prague and spans the Vltava. We walked from west to east along the bridge. It’s construction began in 1357 when King Charles IV was on the throne and finished in the early 15th century. It was the only bridge crossing the river until 1841. It is 516 m long and nearly 10 m wide. It has three bridge towers and is decorated by 30 statues originally erected about 1700, but now almost of all have been replaced by replicas.

This is a view of the south bank on the west side.

On the east side this pier is covered with large building sticks out into the river.

This is Charles IV.

This is looking back west across the river through a fence covered in love locks.

We found Google Maps Live View very helpful in getting around.

This sign made me laugh. Fortunately, we both wanted to do the same thing today, so I didn’t need to leave my husband there.

This was an amazing square, on the way to the main square.

This is the astronomical clock. It is on the old town hall, and was first installed in 1410, making it the third oldest astronomical clock in the world, and the oldest clock still in operation

As we walked down the hill from breakfast, the crowds were growing, but once we got to the main square it actually became difficult to move around all the people including bike tour groups, which seemed like a really bad idea, given how crowded it was, and how rough the cobbled roads and squares are.

This is Church of Our Lady before Týn. We didn’t go in, but plan to return. Cindy wants us to look for the grave of Tycho Brahe, the last major astronomer before the invention of the telescope, when we are there.

Here are a couple more photos of the main square. The panorama gives you an idea of the scale of it although it does flatten it out a bit.

We ran into the same bike tour group again on our way to Wenceslas square.

This was a beautiful arcade that we came across.

There are so many street car routes here and they travel so frequently. Apparently Prague has one of the biggest street car fleets in the world. It has 882 trams and 26 daytime routes.

This beautiful square is Wenceslas Square, of the Christmas Carol, known locally as Václavské náměstí.

This is the national Museum of History.

This is the view of Wenceslas Square from the national Museum of History. There were large crowds here, but these people didn’t seem like tourists, and we’re waving check flags. There was also a heavy police presence. I learned this evening when I googled what was going on there today, that thousands gathered to call on the government to resign over high inflation and the rising cost of living, about 45 minutes after I took this picture.

This was the first cycling infrastructure I’ve seen on the road here. I don’t think I would like to ride here. Where there aren’t a lot of cars there are a lot of cobbles, so it would be very rough. And most of the infrastructure is just paint, mostly sharrows, and a few bike lanes that seem to start and stop randomly.

We had lunch at a Korean restaurant near the train station, where we arrived yesterday.

One of the things I’ve long wanted to see in Prague is the dancing house by Frank Ghery.

From there we walked along the river bank and then onto Slovensky Island, where we saw this interesting statue cradling bag pipes. It’s known as The Harmony.

The WeWork location was in a fascinating building, but almost completely empty.

Next, we went to a monument of Velvet Revolution, which was a nonviolent transition of power in what was then Czechoslovakia in 1989 from a one party government to a parliamentary republic.

Our final stop for taking the tram back to the hotel was the kinetic sculpture of Franz Kafka, an author based in Prague. The head stops at the perfect spot twice an hour for 15 minutes, then resumes rotations which last 15 minutes.

Our friend Victoria suggested installing the app AtlasObscura. I have followed them on Twitter for years, and Alun gave me the book one year for Christmas, but I didn’t realize there was an app. It has proven quite useful, and if you allow it to know your location. It will send you notifications when you’re near something of interest. It is crowd sourced, and one can also contribute to it. I already have a couple of things we’ve come across that I think would be good entries that they don’t have. There are also no entries for Brampton so I think when I return home, I will try to submit a few things.

The street car was standing room only for the first several stops. Here we are ascending the hill to the hotel.

Around the bend, the ascent continues.

We had great burgers at this restaurant tonight.

The city has recently converted a disused tram loop and foot bridge into a restaurant and gathering area. There was a great view from the foot bridge to the tram, was running up and down the street that runs past our hotel.

We walked over 14 km today.