83. New Language, New Money

We are spending this week in Prague! So for 4 days we have to switch languages and currency. In Spain and France, we had a small amount of hope that we would understand the language. We were just getting used to Germany, and now we have Czech to deal with. I don’t even know where to start with Czech. They have weird little letters and tick marks on most of them. Luckily, the only Czech we have had to speak was when we were trying to order, Trdelnik – go easy on the consonants, Prague! - , little donut goodies. 

We only have 3 full touring days here, so today was packed! We started in Old Town, about a 40 minute walk, but a lot of city life along the way.  The bridge that goes over the Vltava river has an awesome overview of the west side of Prague. We got a glimpse of the Palace and all the buildings surrounding it.

 

We made our way up to the Palace – and I mean up! This place is super hilly – and found a nice place to picnic. The highlight of the picnic was the automatic lawn mower going to work behind our bench. 

We saw the ending of the changing of the guards ceremony and the Royal band playing instruments out the lower level windows! As far as touring the actual palace, I have to say I wasn’t overly impressed. Just a couple rooms with hardly any decoration. But after seeing the Versailles Palace, I might be hard to impress. This place did have a great view, and some great history. We traveled back to a time when disagreeable government officials were simply thrown out of windows and bishops were thrown off bridges for refusing to talk about peoples confessions.

The palace area is also the home of St Vitus Cathedral. This cathedral looks truly medieval. It’s almost on the same level as the Cologne Cathedral. St Vitus has been in a battle between being owned by the church or the state for many many years. Finally, someone came up with the great idea of splitting the responsibility between both church and state so now everyone is happy and Prague is in peace.

Back at the bottom of the hill in old town we watched a magic show. It really wasn’t magic at all. Anyone can make crude jokes and lay on a pile of broken glass in front of a crowd, but it sure kept Brody entertained. Another favorite was the giant bubble blowers. They have two sticks connected by two strings that make a giant circle for blowing giant bubbles. We are going to make one when we get back home.

Other stops today were St. Mary the Victorious, where there is a really important and special stature of baby Jesus, and the Jewish quarter. We are so desperate to see what we can without paying, that we found the little community hall building and walked halfway up the steps and stuck our heads through the bannister to get a glimpse of the Jewish Cemetery.  It was a fun scavenger hunt if anything! 

Our walk home included finding overhangs to duck under to avoid the random spurts of rain, and admiring the street jewelry vendors were selling.