Bakercourt's Blog

That's me and Stalin. He's terrifying. There's a giant metronome on a hill (to the right of the Charles Bridge) that is always tick-tocking for everyone to see. I asked our driver about it – it's supposed to represent the tension between communism and capitalism, between what he calls "Stalin and No-Stalin".

You have to walk past the [Capitalist] casino to get to the [Communist] museum.

This one is triply ironic, I love it. The Slavonic dolls of contemporary capitalist Prague are at the mercy of the advertisement for the museum. And, the McDonalds is so big that it now has a 'new, extended' outside area. 

After St Vitus we headed off towards the legendary St Nicholas. It was certainly worth the extra bit of walking! I put the images in the mosaic because you should feel some of the overwhelming urgency that you feel when you're really there – everything is simply spectacular. It looks rather ordinary on the outside, but you walk in and you feel so awed that you have to sit down in one of the pews. The interior was finished in 1761 and you can see the strong early Church (as a political power, not as a religious power) influences. Like much of the city's statues, the church's interior is detailed extensively with gold. This makes it quite impossible to try and focus on one part – the light glitters all over the interior and you're constantly attracted to something just out of your line of vision! 

We walked down to the Kafka Museum and discovered a little pathway that led to the foot of the Charles Bridge – where G decided it was now or never! If it wasn't entirely obvious from the above picture, we are now engaged 🙂 We have been looking at rings for some time now, but he decided he wasn't going to wait for me to make up my mind anymore. This is my 'temporary ring' – I'll get the other one made before the wedding, and he can give it to me then. I've chosen something flat (the large pearl keeps me on edge because I constantly think that it's going to knock out) and simple. Perhaps I'll post a picture when I'm feeling more girly. 

Ooh I had almost forgotten about this shop! It's called "Viva Praha!", and specialises in sweets and chocolates which they make on site. 

Top Left and Bottom Right: Jars of delicious looking sweets, all with words embedded on the inside. The giant swirls you see underneath in packets (the bottom shelf) are leftover rolls of candy. They take these rolls and streeeeetch them out, then cut off the little ends to make the sweets that go in the jars. These rolls cost a fortune, but they'd make a fabulous gift!

Bottom Left: Packets of fruity sweets – each packet is flavoured like a different fruit ranging from pears to raspberries. They were tempting, but unlikely to be eaten so we restrained ourselves. Or rather, G restrained me. 

Top Middle: The chocolatier sections. Here each little chocolate is stamped with a printed (edible) surface. It's remarkable! They are so beautiful, but very expensive.

Top Right: (I took this photo for Justin, so, Robyn, do show him if you think he'll like it) This is George the Gorilla. He's the world's biggest and heaviest chocolate sculpture (the sign underneath says so – he weighs in at a whopping 112kg!). The chocolate museum is right next door to this shop so it's no wonder that they have such interesting things in the window displays!

Bottom Middle: A chocolate nativity set. Very appropriate for Christmas. 

Okay – on our last day we (read: I) decided that we were going to see the famous Bone Church at Sedlec Ossuary. It is approximately fifteen minutes outside of Kutna Hora, which is approximately an hour outside of Prague. With great difficulty and much walking we managed to secure two train tickets that would take us all the way and back again – we  just had to figure out how to use the metro, the trains and the transfer mini trains in Kutna Hora! We got to the station fine. The trains they had were very old – they all had compartments with doors that kept you separate from the walkway (except for when the ticket man came to check that we were in the right place) – how fun! We were running 

very late – I knew that the ossuary closed at 4pm, and that the train was supposed to arrive in Kutna Hora at 3pm. We got to Kutna Hora, ran around the station trying to find the next train, and finally stopped a train conductor and tried to communicate that we needed to get to Sedlec in a hurry! Luckily he spoke English, and the train we were looking for was his. We got to Sedlec and half-ran towards the only spire in the sky (hoping it was attached to the famous Church!). 

Sedlec Ossuary was creepy and amazing. It is supposed to be a celebration of the 40,000-odd people who were buried at the holy site, which is why the bones are arranged in pyramids, chandeliers, and other traditionally beautiful designs. It was definitely something to see, so if you're ever in Prague, do make a turn. It would have been more impressive if we had a guide (I think); we were listening to one of the other group's guides who was telling them how to tell how the people died from looking at their skulls (most of the people here died in the Hussite Wars, so their cause-of-death was typically blunt trauma to the head). The rest of the bones came from plague victims. We made it just in time to see the church before it closed, so yay!

We went back down to the 'station' which was a tiny little bus-stop on the side of two train tracks in the sand and waited until a train came by. It took about fifteen minutes, at which time the sun was almost set and it was getting freezing!

 

We got onto the train which started going backwards (and of course no-one spoke English so we were getting quite panicky!) but it went backwards for about three minutes then stopped, reversed, and went the right way for the rest of the trip. All of the trains that side do this – perhaps to change directions on the track, or to get a running start? Who knows.

We got back to Kutna Hora and waited for an hour for the next train. At this stage it was -1'C (not counting the wind chill) and it was getting so cold that the people waiting with us had started walking laps around the train station. We soon followed as everything was getting numb and uncomfortable. The train arrived and everyone on the station piled in (regardless of where it was headed – it was just too cold to wait there anymore!). If it wasn't for the arrow on the Praha sign, we might easily have gone the wrong way. Nobody spoke English and we didn't know enough Czech to have a conversation, so we were just hoping that it was the right train! Turns out that we were right! We had to stand the whole way home because the train was so full:

Thank goodness we found a train! It was quite funny because a lot of people were huddled around the toilet (there was more space there to stand) so we all had to devise a complicated musical-chairs regime every time someone needed the loo. 

After getting home I discovered that I had cold burn on my legs – ouch! And I was wearing thermal leggings! It must have been very cold at Kutna Hora. 

We had been meaning to try this restaurant and it seemed like it was a good reward after that long trip! I was attracted by the beautiful low-hanging lights all over the restaurant, and the food looked good as well. I would highly recommend this restaurant to any Prague visitors – it was amazing!

The service was great, the food was delicious and the decor is beautiful. The lights are actually those things that they make African instruments out of – like giant hollowed-out butternuts or pumpkins. From what I could tell, the designs are drawn on in pencil then drilled out, then a tiny little plastic bead is pushed into the hole. The colours of the beads determined the patterns that formed. Aren't they amazing?

We got pita breads and "three delicious sauces" before we got our food – I had a chicken kiev and G had a mixed grill. Yum! Possibly the best food we had in Prague! Can you see how exhausted we are there? We went back to hotel, got into bed, and slept right through all of the bells tolling every hour! That was quite good because we had an early breakfast, went souvenir shopping, and spent the rest of the morning (and the rest of the day!) travelling back home.

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!

Perhaps my favourite part of our trip was going up the Old Town Square Tower (above the Astronomical Clock). It was so beautiful, and afforded views of the entire city from a tiny little vantage point. We did this really early on Day Three to avoid the crowds, but it was still bustling and busy up there! 

Isn't it beautiful? You can see how the streets are all winding and narrow in this picture. They don't appear to link up in any particular order which means you often get lost, or walk around in circles for a while when you're trying to find something. 

We went up just before the hourly animations so here you can see all of the people watching and waiting. This was at about quarter-to, and it was quite early in the morning but it still drew in the crowds!

I've included this picture as a visual accompaniment to yesterday's presentation. Um. That really big hill up there in the back right? That's Petrin Park. The Hunger Wall is the white thingy running through it. We walked to the top. I have the blisters to prove it!

You can take the lift up, which is a glass tube that runs up the middle of this cagey network. Or you can walk. We walked. At the top there's a tiny little spiral staircase which you have to go up – it is so narrow that they installed 'pedestrian traffic lights'.

Prague is a deeply religious city. You walk past thousands of monuments, statues and churches as you navigate the city's streets. A lot of the statues feature gold plating or gold leafing (like the halo above) which makes them particularly beautiful! It is considered to be good luck when you rub the gold parts (which also keeps them very shiny!).

Petrin Park is very beautiful. It's quite big, and has the famous Hunger Wall running through it. You hike up one of the walkways to get to the top for a good city view, and to visit the Castle district (where the restaurant was). There are trams running up and down it all the time, but we decided to take the walk. 

How amazing is this frozen waterfall? I was so excited that we had to stop and take hundreds of photographs of the icy stalactites! My camera was struggling in the cold weather – it took quite a while to switch on the poor lens was freezing cold. It was about 5'C outside, but the wind was picking up and that was seriously icy!

I took this picture near the top – it is quite a steep walk up the hill but at least there are lights in case it gets dark, and handrails as well. There are quite a few restaurants in the park which means that it stays open late. We stopped to get coffee at a little cabin near the top, but it was awful! I had a hot chocolate which was essentially solid chocolate warmed up. Bizarre! Tasty, but the cocoa powder hadn't dissolved properly so it was very clumpy at the bottom. 

At the top of the hill is the Observation Tower, the mirror maze, the Calvary Chapel and the Church of St. Lawrence. We got to the top, starting taking a few pictures, and then the weather took a turn for the worse – and we still had to find that restaurant! We hurried off in search of Strahov Klaster (the restaurant was supposed to be there) and tried to avoid slipping down the very icy paths. 

We found the Klaster (monastery) rather easily – this is the view from the top, above – and eventually located Peklo, the restaurant. I had chosen it because it was set in an ancient cellar that was designed to look like an artificial cave. Also, the ground above it was nicknamed 'paradise', which is why they decided to call their restaurant 'hell' (peklo!). Anyway, we got there, and can you believe it – they hadn't actually made the booking! We were so cross. It is such a long way from our hotel so I'm glad we didn't mission out there in the middle of the night trying to find it. We walked back to the hotel which took aaaaages (and many blisters!) then decided to go walk around the market and find somewhere else to have dinner. 

This is a typical street sign in Prague. It's much nicer than the others we've seen! The street signs are attached to nearby buildings. This one is from right outside the Klaster.

We walked around for a couple of hours looking at all of the restaurants and finally settled on this one: U Supa. It served traditional Czech cuisine which was quite appealing in a touristy way. 

Top Left: G in front of one of U Supa's giant lampshades.

Top Middle: U Supa paraphernalia. 

Top Right: My dinner. I ordered Roast Beef with cranberry, orange and cream with dumplings. I had expected a lot more for the price we paid (and the description on the menu!), but it was quite tasty. Pork is the national dish in Prague so everyone eats it. There are very few dishes that don't include it, so my options were quite limited! G had pork shoulder with cabbage and dumplings. Very Czech. 

Bottom Left: Me, I can't look at cameras. I am very camera shy. 

Bottom Middle: My tiny hot chocolate. It was cold outside! This hot chocolate was very thick as well – quite a trend. This one was more like runny chocolate mousse which was very tasty (and cheaper than a cold drink!).

Bottom Right: Another Czech beer notch on G's drinking belt. 

 

U Supa taught us to always check the bill: they charged us an additional 49CZK each for the bread that they put on the table at the beginning of the meal! We didn't eat it so I asked what the 'cover charge' was for, and they quickly took it off. Quite rude! But we were warned – the guide book did tell us to watch out for restaurant 'freebies' because they are always added to the bill. 

This is Old Town Square. We're standing just to the side of the Astronomical Clock, looking back towards the hotel. That rather beautiful building looming in the background of this picture is the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn. (Tycho Brahe is buried here!) The guide book tells me that the present Gothic Church was started in 1365! The square is surrounded by restaurants on every side and it currently has a big, fun Christmas market in the middle – it sells food, hot wine, traditional hand-made gifts and sweets.

In this picture you an see more of the market. It is closed because it is quite early, but when it's open it gets really busy and there are lots and lots of people buying things. There is a big stage where local acts perform – choirs, orchestras and bands. 

This is the astronomical clock in the Old Town Hall Tower. The book tells us that the Tower acquired it's first clock in the early fifteenth century, and it has been rebuilt twice since then (this particular version that we see now was rebuilt between 1552 and 1572). It's really rather beautiful and looks great at night when the spotlights shine on it! The top bit is the clock and the bottom bit is a calendar. The clock doesn't measure real time; it imitates the orbits of the sun and moon around the earth. That's very sophisticated! Every hour, on the hour (according to the "real" clock on the side of the tower) the whole tower becomes animated with a stunning presentation. Little windows open above the clock and marionettes move along a procession (they're supposed to be the twelve apostles). The figures pictured above also do things (death, the skeleton, rings his bell, for example). A trumpeter climbs to the top of the tower and sounds out a medieval ditty on all four sides of the tower as well. Hundreds of people gather underneath the clock hourly to see it all take place, and it gets very busy. You can always tell when it's nearing that time because people start gathering just before quarter-to.

We perfected the 'self portrait' picture – although more often than not one of us got cut off! Behind us is the entrance to the Tower, with a guard all dressed up in traditional wear (complete with sword!). 

After watching the clock we walked across one of the bridges to get to Prague Castle (we had a booking for a restaurant on the other side of town and we wanted to make sure that we knew where it was before we had to go out). This is the view from the bridge. 

You can see the old buildings all lined up along the side of the river! The architecture is spectacular here. Old Town is filled with ancient buildings that range from the 1300s to the 1800s (the more modern versions). 

The other side of the bridge. We're walking across it, towards Petrin Park. (I wish there was an 'insert symbol' button on Vox! The actual Czech letters are quite different from our English ones).

Technically this picture should have come before the bridge (it is the street view on the left). Aside from the beautiful buildings, it shows the tram lines which are hung all over the city skyline! The trams are quite zippy, and our driver was telling us that a Tram Driver will get two weeks of paid leave if he has an accident, so they're always bumping into things. Also, notice that there aren't any road markings? Those lines are for the trams (they're tram tracks) and not for the cars. It gets really confusing when  you're trying to cross the road and you can't tell where the cars are going to be! 

Another thing that makes crossing roads confusing is that the roads aren't paved like they are here or at home. They're cobbled. Not all of them, mind, but the majority of them. So something that looks like a pedestrian walkway could in fact be a giant motorway. You never can tell – especially because pedestrians walk in the roads as well as on the pavements!

Who would have thunk it – Prague is only an hour and a half away! And a whole time-zone too! It took us forty-five minutes to train to the airport, and a further hour and a half via plane to Prague. It was dark when we got there (it gets dark after three, and night falls at about four) so we couldn't really see much. Luckily G had arranged an airport transfer so that we just found the driver, got into his car (a black Skoda with white leather interior!) and drove all the way through the city to the hotel. Our driver was bizarre – he didn't speak much English, played Lady Gaga really loudly and wove in and out the traffic without using any indicators! 

Prague is jam-packed with hotels so it really was just luck of the draw. G chose a nice hotel in the middle of Old Town which ended up being a fantastic choice – we were so close to everything! The hotel itself had five floors (we were on the fourth, which gave us fantastic views) and introduced us to the bizarre Prague concept of 'no no-smoking zones'! You were allowed to smoke in the rooms and in the reception, but not in the passage way where the lift and stairs were. This means that a thick wall of old smoke hits you every time you open up your hotel room door!

Top Left: that was the view from our room! Isn't it magnificent?

Top Middle: The breakfast buffet. It was delicious! Served from 7am – 10am every morning, and packed with the same delicious things every day. G sampled the varieties of cold meats and pork sausages, followed by boiled eggs and cheese (and occasionally traditional Czech breakfast vegetables), and then by fruit and yoghurt. I had toast with jam, fruit and yoghurt, and one of their sweet pastries. You helped yourself to kava (coffee) and all you can eat. The restaurant was visually quite something: it was decorated in the popular Art Nouveau style and was detailed in very bright yellow and red. (This was only a breakfast venue, as far as we could tell. The hotel actually had a Chinese take-away restaurant upstairs. We didn't go there.) 

Bottom Left: The translations are not the best. Most people in Prague speak some form of English and it's fairly easy to communicate. A lot of tourists come to visit Prague and communicate in broken English rather than in Italian, French or German. We did struggle when we visited a little town just outside of Prague, but that's another story for another post. 

Bottom Middle: The hotel room was very comfortable! The bed linen was unusual though – each side of the bed had a small single duvet that was folded sideways (as if it were a foot comforter or something like that). I'm not sure if this is typical hotel practice, but it's unusual. Opposite the bed was the TV (CNN was in English, but the rest of the channels were dubbed in Czech) and the kettle (which came with three different types of tea but no coffee – we found a minimarket that sold coffee sachets though!). On the left was a coffee table with two very comfortable chairs. The bathroom had a bath (yay!) and I got confused with the symbols on the tap. "C" does not stand for cold, it's hot. Cold is represented by a symbol that looks like a pound sign. 

Side Pictures: The hotel key. G at breakfast. G in the lift. G at breakfast. I'm camera happy. 

Right, so the rest of Day One. 

It was quite late when we landed so we walked around a bit. Everything was closed for Christmas Eve, so we took a few photographs and then walked back to find a restaurant for dinner. We settled on an amazing little gem called Red Hot & Blues - right opposite the hotel's front door! It's an American Jazz restaurant run by Czech people – delicious food, great service, amazing music. Highly Recommended. 

Left: G's burger and my chicken burritto (with beans and rice!). We shared. It was delicious! Very similar to the Fat cactus, only tastier. 

Top Row: G's first Czech beer. The table centre-piece was a wrought-iron candle holder that had a piece of yellow paper rolled up inside. Instead of a giant candle they had put a tiny tea light in – it made the light soft and cosy. And then that's G enjoying his second Czech beer. 

Middle Row: The menu. My lime margarita (strangely cropped, completely unintentional. Blame Picasa). 

Bottom Row: we shared a chocolate brownie. It was yum. And finally, the front cover of the restaurant's menu – with address, if you're interested in visiting. Their happy hour is from 12.00 – 19.00! 

One of the patrons decided to do a blues solo on the resident piano which was a lot of fun! He played very well. We were exhausted after all the travelling so we headed back to the hotel so that we could get up quite early and beat the rest of the guests to the buffet! (and, of course, to start our huge planned walk early so we didn't lose much of the day). 

Aside: Google's Picasa (free!) has a rather nice mosaic function – it automatically fits your images into the collage, and you can adjust the border sizes and the size of the image. This is the first time I'm using it; I will have to check out whether you can manually arrange pictures (it does have a great shuffle button) or adjust cropped settings. 

It was phenomenal! And I have 1082 photographs to prove it. That's not counting G's additional 300+! I hadn't realised that I took so many! Ah well, more to share. I'll put some of them up over the next few days – so many stories to tell!

This is Prague. Isn't it lovely?

We're off to Prague for a few days; we're leaving tomorrow morning so no more updates for a while! But rest assured, there will be millions of photographs for you when we come back! Happy Holidays all. x