24-9-2018 - Today we take our Easyjet flight from Bristol Airport to Prague.
The flight just a mere 1 hour and 20 minutes late we decide to get an airport taxi to our AirBandB Apartment at Namesti Bratri Synku, Praha 4. We feel we were overcharged at 1200 Koruna (about £40) apparently normally about £25.
Our apartment was newly refurbished, nicely decorated and comfortable overlooking this square where the trams stop.
25-9-2014 Tomorrow we start our sightseeing tour of this amazing city.
Prague is one of the most beautiful cities of Europe. The charming city and its amazing architecture, centuries-old buildings, is also famous for its beer, and amazing food make Prague a great destination.
Day One
We head across the square and get the tram tickets and tram no. 11 to the top of Wencelas Square just by the National Museum. Wenceslas Square not so much a square but a very large triangle.
Today we are going to see some important tourist sites, including the Old town square, Astronomical clock, Tyn church, Charles Bridge, Prague Castle, and St. Vitus Cathedral.
From our apartment we get a tram to the top of Wenceslas Square not so much a square as a huge rectangle with all the shops .
We make our way to the bottom of the square towards exploring Prague Old Town. named after after Bohemia's patron saint, Wenceslas the buildings have a beautiful Art Nouveau facade. At the top is the national museum a neo-renaissance building undergoing refurbishment. At the top of the square is a large statute of the Premyslid Prince sitting aside a horse. There is also a memorial to the victims of communism especially the two men who died after the 1968 invasion. We take a meander along the square towards Old Town.
The center of Prague is Old Town Square (Staromestska namesti). This where you find the iconic picture of the town of the spiky topped Church of Our Lady of St Tyn across from the Astronomical Tower. Unfortunately we can not see the clock as it is hidden by scaffolding and a tarpaulin due to a refurbishment of the clock. Legends say it is one of the most beautiful clocks in Europe it is a shame we can not see it!. However this is a busy tourist site and is a very nice. square filled with people from across the world and a handful of food stalls. You can take an elevator to the top of Town Hall Tower, but we save that for tomorrow.
We will start our Prague trip here trying to ignore the throngs of tourists and the hawkers trying sell everything under the sun or that there is a Starbucks on the square which we use for the convenience of their toilets. We stop for coffee and chat to three Swiss young women who are trainee teachers on a city visit. We look at the city as a centre of culture and science with a well preserved skyline of spiky towers, medieval cathedrals, and Victorian age buildings.
From this square, you can get to all of the big sights in Old Town, all is quite walkable and the square really pretty. Having come from Wenceslas Square with its enormous long square lined with retailers that you can find nearly anywhere in Europe, capped with the National Museum. This is the center point of much of the revolutionary history of the city. The so called Velvet Revolution began here.
Walking and wandering around the old town area is a lot of fun. There are a lot of little winding streets and tiny hidden squares to find.
On the Old Town Square you can also find the beautiful Tyn and St. Nicholas churches. Tyn church is only open in the mornings and late afternoons, while St. Nicholas is open all day.
We head for one of the famous bridges that crosses the Vltava River, Charles Bridge. Charles Bridge is a pedestrian only bridge that crosses the Vltava River. The spiked towers on either side were used as models to rebuild several of the other towers in town during the Victorian era. This is definitely a worthwhile site to stroll over. There are plenty of statues, art peddlers and musicians. There exists a myth that when you touch every golden attribute of the statues, you will be lucky all your life. Make sure you visit the bridge in the early morning or late afternoon as during the day, the bridge gets overcrowded by tourists.
Crossing the bridge we head uphill towards the Castle stopping to buy a typical pastry that you can buy almost everywhere around Prague. It is made from rolled dough that is wrapped around a stick and then grilled. You can choose to top it with sugar and walnut mix or to fill it with strawberries, Nutella pasta or icecream. We decided to fill with ice-cream it was so delicious and it only costs 60 ZKR.
This castle is located on the hill across the Charles Bridge. It is a very large castle complex, dating back to the 9th century. It is the official residence of the President of the Czech-Republic. Before walking inside the Prague castle we walk to the right side where you can enjoy a panoramic view of the city.We also strike it lucky to see the changing of the guard at one of the gates - certainly not a Buckingham Palace parade!
Behind Prague Castle, you find the St. Vitus Cathedral which has unique baroque architecture and is really beautiful to visit. You can if you feel fit climb one of the towers.
The Castle is actually a fortified hill with two gardens, the Royal Garden and the South Garden. You do have to pay to get onto the premises, but the ticket lasts for two days. Buy a skip-the-line castle ticket here.
Highlights of the hill include St Vitus Cathedral, whose towers dominate the skyline of the hill, and you can climb one of the towers. There are also several exhibits about the history of the castle, and the palace buildings. A row of old low houses called the Golden Row once housed the city’s famous author son, Franz Kafka. We decide to tour the South Gardens offering some of the best scenic views over the city and most Prague Castle tours take advantage of it but these gardens are only open in the summer season April to October 1000-1800.
We then wander back down some steps to the riverside to an area called Kampa, a neighbourhood by the river, where you find the John Lennon Wall. In the 1980’s, students started writing John Lennon lyrics on this wall to celebrate the communism’s end. Today, the wall represents love, peace, and a memory to John Lennon. Tourists can write or paint something on the wall. in my opinion the wall is a graffiti wall not something of an artistic nature but there is an atmosphere at this wall.
Walking further along the riverside you come to a Kampa Park where there is an art studio with three large bronzes of giant bronze babies. These are by David Cerny a Czech born sculptor and artist with over ten different sculptures located in and around Prague, My favoruites being these giant babies His work is easy recognisable because of it’s offensive yet amusing humor, many people have called his art hooliganism and some states have even gone to the extent of banning his art to be shown. But even though Cerny got so much negativity towards his art, he remained driven and now has a museum dedicated to his unique style of sculpting located in Prague’s Kampa Park.
Outside of his museum, in the green fields looking out onto the 658 year old stone bridge is where you will find some of his most known and talked about sculptures, the giant babies. Tourists come from all around the world to get a photograph of their babies sitting atop the babies backs. We know, it’s strange. The bronze babies are scattered around the side of the museum crawling on all fours. Their faces look as though they have been smushed with a barcode-like mechanical pattern stamped in the middle, which makes them all the more creepy.
Behind the Cerny museum standing in the water is a group of 34 yellow plastic penguins. They are the work of The Cracking Art Group a group of 6 international artists who have made it their mission to send a message about the dangers of climate change and the need for society to take positive action to protect our environment. The 34 adorable penguins that stand in an orderly line along the bank of the river Vltava near to Kampa Park are all made of recycled plastic bottles. They stand as example of what can be produced by recycling our waste. You can get a good view of the penguins from Kampa Park.
On our way back to Old Town Square we visit the Klementinum Library and view the Astronomical Tower. The buildings hosted a Jesuit college until the eighteenth century and it then became part of Charles University. It currently houses the National Library of the Czech Republic.For over two centuries the Klementinum has housed the Czech National Library.
The site where the Klementinum is currently located was home to the Saint Clement chapel, founded during the eleventh century. In 1232, the Dominicans occupied the church and built a monastery on the same grounds. The Jesuits were invited to come to Prague in 1556 by the Emperor Ferdinand I. They soon established themselves in the Old Town, transforming and expanding the Dominican monastery and the chapel into a Jesuit college.
Our guided tour showed the Baroque library hall, Meridian hall and the Astronomical Tower.
The library has over 20,000 books, frescos and geographical and astronomical globes in a dimly lit hall, the Baroque library will transport you to the eighteenth century, imagining all those that have passed through this library.
Located in the Astronomical tower, the Meridian hall was used to determine noon thanks to a small ray of light that came through a hole in the wall at the top of the room. It was then signalled to the locals by means of a flag. Here, you can see the original scientific equipment used throughout the centuries.
Since the Astronomical tower was built at 223 ft (68 m), it had been used for astronomical studies. Since the second half of the eighteenth century, it was used by scientists such as Joseph Stepling, who founded the observatory in the tower for astronomical and meteorological measurements. The tower offers a 360° view of the historic centre. The views across the city are amazing and the tour is well worth it to get this stunning roof top vistas.
Day Two
Today, we have booked a 3 hour walking tour with Sandeman's NewEurope. This tour is free, you only need to tip your guide at the end if you are happy with the tour you received. This is a great way to get familiar with the city and learn some history.
The tour takes around 3 hours and we meet our guide, Andrea at 11.00am in the main square. Our walk around the inner city; we would learn about Prague during the communist era, its architectural significance and the city’s role during world war two. On this 3-hour walking we covered Old Town Square & Astronomical Clock. A View of Charles Bridge. House of the Black Madonna & Museum of Cubism. Church of Our Lady before Týn. View of Prague Castle. Rudolfinum – Czech Philharmonic. Old New Synagogue & the Golem. Art Nouveau Municipal House.Our guide was really knowledgeable, she knew her stuff and spoke about the history and culture of the city. We had a half hour break in a restaurant, tome to catch your breath and revitalise. However the group was some 35+ people which I thought too large. With such a large group if was difficult at times to hear what the guide was saying. On a positive note it provided us with a good orientation and a familiarity of the city. During the rest break the company then sells other tours and we purchased for 999CZK a 2 hour river trip for the following afternoon. Andrea also provided some good tips such as where to change currency, churches worth visiting and about the tour to the top of the Town Hall.
After our walk we visited The Jewish Quarter Josefov. Prague has an interesting history and had one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe. In this Jewish quarter, you can experience and see the Jewish cemetery, synagogues, the historic grave yard, and the Prague Jewish Museum.
A ticket provides for various tours of the Jewish Quarter where you can wander throughout the area and visit the harrowingly overcrowded cemetery and Europe’s oldest synagogue.
It is said that Hitler wanted to retire to Prague and wanted to preserve the Jewish Quarter as a “museum to an extinguished race”, which means the buildings were almost untouched as the Jews were taken and killed during WWII.
If you’re interested in the history of Nazi Germany and in particular the treatment of Jews, a single ticket to the Jewish Museum will get you admitted into all the buildings here. These tickets cost 330 CZK ($15usd) and admittance is from 9am until 6pm daily.
The Jewish Quarter in Prague, known as Josefov, is located between the Old Town Square and the river. Its torrid history dates from the 13th century, when Jewish people were ordered to vacate their disparate homes and settle in one area.
Over the centuries, Jews were banned from living anywhere else in Prague, and with new arrivals expelled from Moravia, Germany, Austria and Spain joining them, more and more people were crowded in.
To add to this, inhabitants of the Jewish Quarter, or the Prague Jewish Ghetto as it also became known, were forced to endure structural changes. The latest occurred between 1893-1913, when a number of buildings were flattened, and the layout of many streets remodelled.
Fortunately, most of the significant historical buildings were saved from destruction, and today they remain a testimony to the history of the Jews in Prague. They form the best preserved complex of historical Jewish monuments in the whole of Europe.
The Jewish Quarter has six synagogues, including the Old-New Synagogue, the Jewish Ceremonial Hall, and the Old Jewish Cemetery.
We did not visit The Old-New Synagogue as it requires a separate ticket. Built in the 13th century in early Gothic style, it is the oldest preserved synagogue in Central Europe, and is the main house of prayer for the Jewish community in the present day (if you take the walking tour and wish to visit this synagogue too, your guide will arrange the ticket for you. Just ask them on the day).
The Jewish Quarter is also the birthplace of the celebrated writer Franz Kafka, who is commemorated with a statue on Dusni Street.
Following the advice of our guide earlier on the way back to Old Town Square we stopped at the Town Hall. 
A trip up the tower is about 120Kc and you can walk or take the lift. There is a ticket office on the 3rd floor.Once at the top you have almost 360 degree views around the city and you are above the majority of the surrounding rooftops with views across to the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn, St Nicholas, the Jan Hus monument, most of the Old Town and a view up to Prague Castle. This is a photographer's dream. Well worth the visit.
Day Three
Today we decide to revisit Prague Castle and give it more time as it is so extensive. We get the 18 Tram from outside our apartment which takes us to the Castle entrance at the top of the hill a journey lasting 25 minutes.
There are huge crowds in lines waiting to be security searched at the gates. Entry to the outside areas is free. We decide as it is a glorious morning to walk around the Royal Gardens.
The Royal Palace Garden was commissioned by the Habsburg Ferdinand I. From the owners he gradually bought old vineyards beyond the valley of the Brusnice stream and had a Renaissance garden laid out here, which later became famous for its rare botanical specimens and the exotic plants gained from distant countries. From the very beginning, there were situated a number of buildings serving the entertainment of the nobility: the Ball Game Hall, the Royal Summer Palace, the Lion Court. Currently the garden follows the tradition of an "English-style" park created there in the mid 19th century, but it also contains elements of Renaissance character (giardinetto near the Royal Summer Palace) as well as Baroque elements (ornamental flower beds). It can be approached via three entrances: two western gates from the street U Prašného mostu which has less crowds and the northern gate near the Royal Summer Palace.
The garden is much less crowded than the castle buildings and you can escape to some peace and quiet.
After spending time in the garden we make our way towards the castle and stop to see birds of prey.
River Cruise
This afternoon we head for the river and Prague Boats to take our small cruise along the Vltava. The cruise begins at the dock at Čech Bridge where you get a good view of Prague Castle. It is a bright sunny day with clear blue sky we pass under the Charles Bridge then past the Rudolfinum and National Theatre. We then wait as we pass thought the locks in Smichov. Having passed the wires the Dancing House comes into view and soon we reach the Vysehrad cliff and Podolí waterworks where the boat turns and heads back.
Rudolfinum
This wonderful building is designed in the neo-renaissance style and is situated on Jan Palach Square on the bank of the river Vitava. The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and Galerie Rudolfinum are based in the building. Its largest music auditorium, Dvořák Hall, is one of the main venues of the Prague Spring International Music festival and is noted for its excellent acoustics.
National Theatre
The National Theatre is the Czech Republic's representative stage, built with funds from a nationwide collection and first opened in 1881, and for the second time in 1883 after a devastating fire. The spectacular exterior and interior decoration, richly embellished with gold, consists of masterpieces of 19th century Czech painters - Aleš, Ženišek, Hynais, Myslbek, and others. Visit drama, opera and ballet performances together with beautiful spaces unforgettable theatre experience.
Smichov Locks
The lock shows the water level on the River Vltava. Earlier in its place there used to be two historically older dams, Šítkovský and Old Town, and there was a system of lock chambers. The lock was built by Lanna between 1911-1922. Technically, it is composed of four successive gates. From the end of the Children's Island then proceeds through the wall a separate channel that leads to Old Town weir.
Dancing House
This building is popular because of its unique architecture. This building is also called ‘The Dancing House’.The Dancing House, or Fred and Ginger, is the nickname given to the Nationale-Nederlanden building on the Rašínovo nábřeží in Prague. It was designed by the Croatian-Czech architect Vlado Milunić in cooperation with Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry on a vacant river front plot
After the cruise we make our way back along the river bank past the Rudolfinum and National Theatre heading to the Old Town Hall through to Wenceslas Square to find our way to the Prague Railway Station in order to get our tickets for the journey to Vienna.
Praha hlavní nádraží is the largest and most important railway station in Prague in the Czech Republic. Located in Vinohrady, it was originally opened in 1871 and named FranzJosef Station after Franz Joseph I of Austria.
We get our tickets for the 4 hour journey to Vienna cost for us about £20 each - not bad for such a long journey. We now head back to a restaurant close to our apartment feeling a little weary after a long day of walking.
Our adventure in Prague is almost over. Tomorrow we will leave our temporary lodgings to travel to the station and onwards to Vienna. We have enjoyed Prague , a vibrant and easily walkable city. We could have spent more time here and still not seen everything.
