After a sort of slow start to the day (I think the travel had started to wear on us at this point), we headed out on the town around 10:45a.m. We headed straight towards Prague Castle across a bridge just north of the Charles Bridge. Part of the walkway leading up to the Palace area was under construction so we took a weaving route through some small vineyards on the hill. With each plateau, the view back across the city became more and more spectacular. By the time we reached the castle gate at the top, people were snapping pictures left and right of Prague below them. We pushed through the crowds of students on field trips until we got to St. Vitus' Cathedral, the most prominent building inside the castle walls. Just below in one of the smaller buildings was the ticket office, where we paid for one of the combo tickets that got us into half the sites -- Old Royal Palace, St. Georges Basilica, and the Old Lane.
The Old Royal Palace portion took you through the enormous great hall of the castle, a few of the bedrooms, some of the outer balconies (which had tremendous views of course), and the throne room. We didn't really know what we were looking at because there weren't any descriptions. Some people were walking around with audio-guides, but we didn't know where they got them.
After the quick tour (its quick when you don't know what anything is), we went over to St. Georges -- an old church with a really neat crypt under the altar.
Here our guidebook was of some use. The ceilings were beautifully painted, some of which was still original and dated back to around 1200.The Old Lane was and still is a tight alleyway consisting of shop after shop. I suppose they used to sell important things like meat and bread, but now its just touristy crap of little use. However, above the shops there was a pretty cool collection of suits of armor from all over Europe as well as halberds, pikes and morningstars. Some dated back to the 14th and 15th centuries, but most were newer. The French and Spanish suits had quite a bit of "flair". One suit resembled a bird -- I would hate to be wearing that one in battle. That'd be the first guy I'd go after. Give him a good whack in the head with my morningstar.
After squeezing down into some dungeon areas, we went back to the main part of the castle and walked around to the front of St. Vitus' Cathedral (I guess it was the front). On the way we passed some of the castle guard who were demonstrating in front of one of the palaces. A little marching, some firing of blanks, tossing guns back and forth. Sorta neat. Just beyond this plaza area, we found another ticket office where apparently we should have started the castle tour ---they had audio guides. Oh well. We were pretty tired of holding things up to our ears for hours on end from the Nazi Rally Grounds.
We headed back towards the castle gate and ducked into the Lobowicz (sp?) Palace Museum. These guys did things right regarding audio guides: Headphones with an electronics box that loops around your neck...not some massive thing that you have to hold to your ear. Really neat tour of the Lobowicz collection of art and artifacts. Their family history traced back to royalty. I can't even begin to remember how it was all connected...but trust me, it was. The Nazi's took everything in WWII and forced the Lobowicz family in exile. After the war, the belongings were recovered, only to be lost again when the Communists ran through town. In 1989, the Lobowicz's were able to return to the Czech Republic and slowly began reclaiming their possessions and land with the help of some new laws that were enacted in the early 90's. The palace tour started with portrait artwork that traced the family history back to the 16th century and sort of provided a good background on their significance in society. The next room had huge collections of dining sets--interesting to me only because some were over 500 years old. Their other claim to fame here was a nearly complete set (100s of pieces) from the 18th century --the largest set in the world from this time period. The next two rooms were the armory. A suit of armor, and tons and tons and tons of rifles, pistols, and crossbows, some of which had very intricate designs.
I found the next room to be the most interesting --the music room. Here they had one of Handel's compositions hand edited by Mozart and 3 original handwritten scores by Beethoven---all of which had been dedicated to one of the Lobowicz dukes who funded most of his work with grants. Very cool. They also had some period violins and oboes, etc.
Next were some more collections of art. The first room contained a single painting called the Autumn Threshing or something like that. The artist had been commissioned to do artwork for each season of the year. There were supposed to be 6, but only 5 are known to be in existence. Another is in NY, one is in Vienna, and I can't remember where the rest are. It was one of the first paintings when landscapes became the prime subject of the artwork, instead of just being a background. The painting showed everyday people doing everyday tasks.
The next room contained two paintings of London in the early 19th century -- perhaps the best record of what the city looked like back then. Extremely detailed works. There were a few other things in the museum, but nothing more of great interest to me. But all in all, it was a well done tour with some interesting displays!
Afterwards we left the castle grounds, grabbed some lunch, and headed back to the hotel. We had been seriously considering going on a pub crawl at 8pm that we'd received an advertisement for, but after doing some research online, we decided it probably wasn't going to be our cup of tea. It started with an hour of open bar (which is bad news) and then appeared to go to all these super-clubby locations-- not exactly up our alley. Our main reason for being interested was the hopes of meeting fellow travelers. We gave it the thumbs down and decided to strike out on our own with a list of pubs in hand. First we stopped into Bars and Books, which has a sister location in New York. Known primarily for their whiskey's, it was quite pricey and we left after 1 non-whiskey drink. There were only 2 other people in the place... at 8pm. We then dropped into a small Czech restaurant/bar that had more than 2 patrons. This ended up being our only true Czech pub experience where your tab is kept by just adding slash marks to a sheet of paper. We collected 5 and headed out for a bite to eat, which we found at an Irish pub half a block off of the main square. After a meal that cost more than it should have and some rugby on "the tele", (All relative, we thought Eastern Europe would be really cheap. Some of it was, but you had to get off the beaten track) we hiked uptown in search of some other bars that our awesome Fodor's book recommended. After walking for at least a mile through suspicious parts of town, we came across the bar we were looking for. Completely dead. We didn't even go in. Being 10:30ish, we just gave up and headed back to the hotel, stopping at a food kiosk along the way for one last beer. (Its so great to just walk around with full cups of beer. Did I already say that?)
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