Day 8 - Prague



Charles Bridge Tower

One of the many statues

Dec 21st - We tried to get an early start to the day - up at 8:00, waved hello to Germany across the street, and then downstairs for breakfast. Mmmm...the best breakfast we've had so far on this trip...Jan (our most excellent host) wanted to make sure we were sufficuently filled for a day of walking the streets of Prague to see the sights.

A drizzly day today, but a lot warmer than yesterday. First up on the itinerary for the day was to head to the Charles Bridge, probably one of the biggest tourist sights in Prague - it was a little crowded, but not as bad as I was expecting from what I had read in the guide book. It is a beautiful stone bridge, with towers on each end and lined with statues on each side. It's a pedestrian only bridge, so lots of time to stop, look at everything and enjoy the view.
 

Tyn Church

Once we had crossed the river, we headed to Josefov which is the Jewish quarter of Prague. We spent some time walking around the streets here to see some of the synagogues from the outside. Next up on the trek was over to the Old Town Square - the architecture here was amazing with the Old Town Hall and Tyn Church. The square is also the location of one of the Christmas Markets (Vanocni trh) - it was a small market compared to some of the others we have seen, but was interesting to see the differences between this an the ones we had been to in Austria. It seemed more of the focus here was on food than on crafty things. There were a ton of stalls making something I had not seen before - Trdelnik cakes. These are round, hollow cakes - made by wrapping a piece of long skiny dough around a wooden spit, so that it makes a coil. The spit is placed over coals to cook (it is constantly turning), and rolled in a sugar & nut mixture when served. I didn't pick one up at this market...but you know that is coming later :) Also at this market we found a mead stall & they were serving hot mead. We bought a small bottle of mead here & we were given a sample of the hot mead. I definitly like this better than the hot wine!

Next we headed to Wenceslas Square to check out the Christmas Market there and to walk up the long square. The market was quite a bit smaller than the one at Old Town Square, but we did try out the Trdelnik cakes here - very good, similar to a cinnamon roll dough. As we made our way to the top of the square past the Wenceslas Monument (yes, Wenceslas as in the Christmas carol Good King Wenceslas). Here and at the next monument, a memorial monument to the victims of Communism were many candles and flowers laid in honor of former President Havlav.

Hungry and a wee bit confused by the map direction, we jumped on the subway to head back to the Jewish quarter to grab a small bite to eat and a Pilsner at the other location of Lokal. Lokal only serves Pilsner Urquell & is referred to as a 'tank bar' as they serve the beer out of huge tanks - we think about 500 Liter tanks - and a pretty fancy serving system that I can't quite describe (I'm sure Rob can). When the tanks are empty, a truck comes by & fills them back up, no keg exchange here.

Tank system at Lokal

 

On our way back to the B&B for a rest before dinner, we passed back through Old Town Square to see it lit up at night, and to warm up with a hot mead. We also found the Astronomical Clock on the side of the town hall - we did not stick around long enough to see the animated movements of the figurines at the top of the hour. At the end of walking day #1 in Prague, we are impressed!

Mead stand



Tyn Church at night




Astronomical Clock



Town Hall at night

Beers for the day: Nothing new today, just more Pilsner Urquell, so instead interesting Czech beer fact...Czechs consume more beer than any other country - an average of 158 Liters per capita.