It has been an exhausting weekend! G's friend Marc has been staying with us since Saturday (that's why posting has started late this week!) but he left yesterday after much touristy outings and shopping, so we're back to normal now – more-or-less.
Let's get Prague over and done with! Above are the Slavonic Dolls which are all over Prague! The entire city is stocked to the top with souvenir shop and most of them have displays like this. There are millions of dolls to choose from! And some of the shops stock designer dolls which have been handpainted with replicas of those artworks painted by the nation's favourite artists – Mucha and Klimt. Those dolls were particularly expensive – around 5000 Kc for small ones.
Above you can see Klimt dolls and a Klimt replica painting. They are all over the city. I went from disliking the possessiveness of the image to enjoying the bold colours and startling repetitive designs – I'm quite changed in opinion!
One of the to-do things on my list was to visit this cute little coffee shop called Cukrkavalimonada (Sugar-Coffee-Lemonade, which, the lonelyplanet website assures me, is the Czech equivalent of eeny-meeny-miny-mo). The decor is pretty and organic with beige, blue and brown hues. The roof is painted like a Victorian tea cloth, the wall behind me (the furthest end of the tiny shop) is detailed with a swirling floral mirror, and the entrance is designated by the twig-trees complete with tiny fake birds. We shared a piece of delicious chocolate cake and each had a coffee (which was very tasty by Prague standards). The bill is delivered to the table with an apple and a note that reads 'An apple a day keeps the doctor away!'. It was the nicest coffee shop in Praha!
These pictures are all out of synch, but that's okay. We went to see St Vitus before the coffee shop, but only by an hour or so. It is possibly the most awe-inspiring, stunning, breath-taking and magnificent demonstration of architecture that I have ever seen. It is spectacular. It is famed for it's stained-glass windows, but sadly we had to settle on the outside view because the queue to get in was winding around the base of the cathedral! We took thousands of pictures of St Vitus so I'll put some up early next week when we're finished with the Prague round-up.
I'm not sure if I've posted this picture yet, but it's worth it if I have. This is a view of a typical road in Prague. It's beautiful! Shops on either side in the traditional 'outdoor shopping mall' style, cobbles down the centre, and looming ancient buildings towering above. Also, the roads wind around the city with no particular pattern (mostly) so you get all sorts of unusual angles when you look down them. This would make a lovely painting!
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