Sunday - Prague City Walk

For those of you traveling anywhere in Europe both of Kathy and I highly recommend the free Rick Steves travel app for your phone. It's like having a tour guide in your pocket. We could not have seen nearly as much as we did without his step-by-step narration. Plus, did I mention, it's free?

Today we started our walk in the center of the New Town on Wenceslas Square under the statue of the good king Wenceslas, of Christmas carol fame. This square (really more of a long, very wide boulevard), is the heart of modern Prague. This is the square that the Nazis marched through in 1939 and the square the Soviet tanks rolled down first in 1945 and then again in 1968.

Our walk took us past the Art Nouveau Grand Hotel Europa, the site of the 1989 peaceful protests by more than 300,000 Czechs (known as the Velvet Revolution), which brought down the Communist government in Prague.

Across the street is the Lucerna Gallery, a mall dating from the 1930s, features the sculpture Wenceslas Riding an Upside-Down Horse by the artist David Cerny.

Across the street we walked through the Svetozor mall with its giant Tesla stained glass window, advertising a defunct Czech radio manufacturer. I wonder if Elon Musk has considered buying it for his electric car company. This is also the home of everyone's favorite Prague ice cream shop. (Kathy says it wasn't very good!)

Further down Na Prikope street we saw the Municipal House, which has Europe's finest Art Nouveau interior, including works by Alfonse Mucha. The cafe and restaurant are both stunning. We stuck our heads in the door and tried to take a picture, but were shooed away by a waitress. No pictures!

Outside of the cafe, in the staircase though, we took a picture of one of the ceramic tile reliefs on the wall. I love the grapes and the lady bugs. Remembering how long Nebuchadnezzar's Ishtar Gate held up (with a similar construction), I wonder how long these will last.

Next to the Municipal House is the Powder Tower, the only one of Prague's medieval gates that is still standing. This is called the Powder Tower because it was built to house the city's gunpowder in the 1400s. This marks the separating line between the Old Town (10th Century) and the New Town (14th Century). It was through this gate that Maria Theresa rode when she was crowned the Queen of Bohemia 500 years ago.

The street leading from the Powder Tower to the Old Town Square is called Celtna Street and it is the most heavily commercialized few blocks in town. For some reason, a group of Russians have bought a row of souvenir shops selling Russian nesting dolls, I suppose figuring that the clueless tourists can't tell the difference between Czech and Russian culture.

The centerpiece of the Old Town Square is the statue of Jan Hus, a Czech reformer who championed many of the same issues as Martin Luther, but a century earlier. Unlike Luther, Hus was burned at the stake.

The Old Town Square also has a bunch of kiosks selling sausages and large pork roast sandwiches. Since it was getting late, I got a sausage and took a short break.

By now, it was noon, and the Astronomical Clock was ready to do its once-a-day performance. I don't know if I mentioned this, but there are a lot of tourists in Prague.

We ended up our morning's walk at the Charles Bridge. Kathy got this pretty shot showing all of the swans swimming by, with the Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral in the distance.

After a nice lunch, we decided to head out to see Alfonse Mucha's masterpiece, The Slav Epic. These twenty huge canvases, painted over twenty years, have been hidden out of sight for many years (I believe for legal reasons), but now are housed in a permanent exhibit right outside of town. This is one of our favorite scenes: a young man reading the Bible to an old blind man.

We spent the afternoon at the museum. Afterwards, we walked over to admire another Art Nouveau pavilion that was hosting the Prague Auto Show. Tired out, we picked up a tram and headed home in time to listen to the live 9:30 AM church service at Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa over the Internet. That's one of the benefits of being 9 hours ahead of California time.