Saturday, August 8th - Prague, Czech Republic

We got up, had breakfast and were on our way to the metro by 10 a..m.  We got off at the Museum stop where the impressive National Museum stands.  The building is huge and beautiful and stands at the end Wenceslas Square, where there is a statue of Good King Wenceslas, the patron saint of the city.  

The museum looks like a palace because it is so large and formidable.  Pictures of the interior look equally royal and impressive.  It houses more than 14 million items in areas from natural history to art and music.  The building was built purposely for the museum in the 19th century.  It has gone through some destruction and some reconstruction such as after WWII.  Other more recent events have also had their effect.  Wenceslas Square is a popular place for people to meet and demonstrate so in 1968, when a demonstration was taking place, the building was damaged by Soviet machine gun fire.  And in the early 70's when they were building the new metro to get people down to this important area, the building was damaged again.  And new highways on either side of the building did not help with the sound, dust and vibration levels.  As a result, the museum is now closed for renovations until at least 2017.

We walked down the main street, Vaclavske Nameste, which has a wide boulevard and sidewalks and lots of expensive shops all along it - not that we were doing any shopping.  We started here because we wanted a tourist information shop and we did eventually find it although it wasn't quite where we expected it.  We then continued our walk down the street and into the winding streets that lead to the old city centre.

We arrived in the old town square just after 11 a.m. so missed the old (1410) city hall clock doing its thing.  The town square is right there and the section facing the clock was full of people all watching the clock: the skeleton (death) strikes the bell, turns over the hour glass and looks at the other three figures indicating their end is near while the three figures (vanity, greed, entertainment/pleasure) all shake their heads no; the rooster crows; the twelve disciples appear in two windows; etc.  It's quite the show.  The clock also displays a calendar, shows the solar and lunar cycles, the zodiac, etc.  It actually shows about 4 different times and is the only mechanical clock in the world to show Babylonian time (sunrise to sunset).  The clock and its many parts have been recognized by UNESCO as a world heritage site.  We looked around the square and then had a break before heading back to the clock to catch the action at 12 noon.

We went into city hall and bought tickets for both going up the tower and the old city hall tour.  The English version of the tour wasn't until 3:30 so we decided to do the tower first and then have some lunch.  Instead of climbing up the winding route to the top (70 meters high), I took the elevator.  The view was fantastic but it was so crowded you could hardly move.  It is just a narrow passage way and with people taking selfies on selfie sticks or taking pictures of their whole group you just couldn't get through.  I didn't last very long but did manage to get a few pictures.  I walked down and that was really interesting even though I was reading everything in the wrong order.  It was a great display and would have made lots more sense if read going up instead of down.  

The display talked about the history of the old town hall, which was originally just one building.  Then they bought the house next door and incorporated that.  Then another house, then another.  Then they built on an entire section that was twice the size of what they had.  It was quite an impressive building when it was at its finest.  Fire and wars did damage the building and after WWII only the original building and attached houses were remaining.  Two thirds of the building no longer exists.  During WWII the Nazi occupied most of the building.  The mayor tried to slow the Nazi progress down when he could but eventually they got tired of him stalling progress so they arrested and eventually killed him.  The people of Prague rebelled on May 5, 1945 and tried to take control of the old city hall.  The Germans hit the building hard in retaliation and that's when most of the damage to the building occurred.  The city was then liberated around May 9th but by then it was too late.

We wandered a bit further away from the town square to find a cool place for lunch and a cheaper place.  Well, we wandered for quite a while and never really did find a "cool" place, just a shady one, and it wasn't much cheaper than right on the square.  By the time we finished lunch it was time to go back for our tour of city hall.

This tour was good but there was a really large group so it was hard to hear the guide at times.  And the paths, especially through the medieval underground passage ways, were really narrow so people couldn't move through very quickly.  We first went into some of the ceremonial halls of the old city hall.  They were nice but nothing too splashy.  There were some paintings, statues, coats of arms, painted ceilings, etc.  Some of the rooms are still used by the mayor for official purposes but right now there must be a dozen one-hour tours going through every day.

The underground areas were amazing.  There were three separate houses attached to city hall that eventually became part of city hall.  The basements (several stories down via narrow, winding, uneven stairs) were from the 12th and 13th centuries and were used by the home owners.  They had wells in the basement so they had safe drinking water.  The rooms were small but would have been used for storing foods (it was definitely cooler underground than above ground!) as the temperature stays cool year round.  The cooked and ate and lived in these areas, and later on they became areas within city hall.

Following the tour we walked toward the river in hopes of finding some shade and a cool place to sit along the river's edge.  We stopped for a look at Charles Bridge and at the castle across the river.  We didn't even go on to the bridge because it was totally in the sun and just looked way too hot.  We wandered along the river bank and watched the birds and the humans.  There were people out in peddle boats and canoes, and even in plastic spheres where they tried to stand up and walk but were not very successful.  There was no really cool and comfortable place to sit so we just kept walking.  We saw the National Theatre and a lot of other large theatre buildings beside it.  Don Giovanni is on now but I don't think I could last through 3 hours of opera in a language I can't understand.  Other than that all the major theatres, opera houses, symphonies are on summer vacation.

Eventually we made our way back to the top of Vaclavske Nameste, the street where we started out.  We watched a bit of the Masters 3X3 basketball that seemed very popular, and then we headed home on the tram that stops right in front of our place.  It was closed for repairs when we arrived yesterday but it is now up and running agin which makes it very handy when you are tired of walking!  Dinner was just a snack in our room and that was just fine by me.  It was too hot to eat very much and I was too tired to go out anyway.  A somewhat early night was also a nice change.