We had selected “Panoramic Prague” - a walking tour of Prague’s highlights. We saw the beginnings of the confusion generated by people who had taken Viking up on the offer to cancel the trip. We ended up waiting a little bit for people who were not coming. There will be more of this for another day or two, until it all settles down.
Anyway, onto the buses we went - there were two of them, headed in opposite directions. One bus would start at the castle (our bus), the other would start with a brief walk through the Jewish quarter and the old town square.
Our tour guide’s accent was a little hard to understand at first, until we figured out some of her mannerisms (“chick” = Czech). She was pleasant enough, but also a bit boring.
The castle is now the seat of the current government - a complex of huge buildings. The only one we were able to go inside to see was the cathedral, which is spectacular.
The guide mentioned that although the Czech Republic has many churches, it is the least religious country in Europe - 75% of the population considers itself atheist or agnostic. Apparently after centuries of assorted governments forcing the current brand of religion on the Czech people, they became distrustful of government-imposed anything. When the Communist regime came to town and imposed government atheism, Czechoslovakia had the least trouble with that particular aspect of government intervention.
This is a view of the entire courtyard.
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| Prague Castle courtyard |
The cathedral’s front facade
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| Prague castle cathedral |
And inside:
After the cathedral, we continued on to walk through the Lesser Town to the Charles Bridge. The temperatures were already soaring; the guide did her best to keep us in the shade. Once on the bridge there was no hiding from the sun. The vendors were just beginning to open their stands.
Of all the statues of saints on the Charles Bridge, the only one she talked about was St John of Nepomuk, who has a halo with 5 stars on it. St. John was thrown into the river by a King, who was annoyed that St. John wouldn’t break the seal of the confessional and tell the King what the Queen had confessed. Reportedly 5 stars appeared when St John’s body popped up to the surface.
The Charles Bridge is not very long, and even in the heat it didn’t take long to walk across it. We followed the guide through the mobbed narrow streets to the Old Town Square - where she left us for a “break” (basically lunch), after which we would go back to the bus to take us back to the hotel. We plopped ourselves down in the nearest restaurant and had something light.
We also saw Benne, who said something a little different - the walk back to the bus would be through the Jewish quarter. So we have a mis-match of information.
When we did meet up with the tour guide after the “break”, she reiterated that we were going back to the bus - when we asked about the Jewish quarter, she said she would point things out along the way, but there would be no stops (that’s a separate tour that we did on our own, and also everything would be closed because it was Shabbat). We decided to not take the bus back.
Instead we went back to the street that we walked along from the Charles Bridges and did some shopping, something we hadn’t done at all up until now.
At some point it was just too hot to continue to walk around, and ubered back to the hotel. While we were waiting for the car to arrive, we saw a parade (?) of people on scooters/small motorcycles - no clue what it was about, but we called it the “Rolling Thunder of Prague”.
Back at the hote, we had a few hours until the “Prague at Night” optional tour. Time for our Shabbat nap!
For dinner we tried walking to a restaurant that had gotten good reviews on Yelp. But after a bit of confusion, we figured out the restaurant was long gone. Rather than wandering too far and then having to walk all the way back, we went back to the hotel and had dinner at the bistro.
We met the group at 7:45 p.m. for the night tour. There was a little more confusion over missing people, but once that was settled, we boarded a van and were on our way.
The evening tour guide was just as difficult to understand as the morning guide, and boring as well. Or maybe we were just tired. The first place we stopped was at a monastery with a great view of the city:
The second stop was at the TV tower
That was about it. we were back at the hotel by 10:00
Tomorrow: on to Germany, in some confusing fashion.
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