Prague Day 2

Day 2. It is a sunny day and will be warm. Emma & I enjoy another great breakfast in the beautiful lounge at the hotel and map our day out.

We decide today we will go to Prague castle and Mala Strana (Lesser Town). I am well over the allure of metros, tubes and subways, especially when it so lovely out, so we decide to take one of the trams to the castle. We jump off (not literally) in Hradcany and walk through quite streets and leafy parks until we end up - quite by chance - at the Royal Gardens. This is a nice way to walk to the castle proper.

Prague castle is the largest castle grounds complex in Europe. It isn't really a "castle" as we would think of it - it is actually a complex of buildings, churches, palaces and nobles houses. It was built as a defensive fortress, as castles are (this is what defines a castle from a palace) as early as the 800's. The Old Royal Palace was built in the 1000's, originally as the home for the Bohemian Princesses. In the Great Hall of the Old Royal Palace, there is a painted date of 1029, but I don't know if that was the date it was built or a date commemorating something else.

Also in the castle grounds are two churches, the Church of St. Vitus and St. George's Basilica. One is Gothic and the other Romanesque. We visited both. St. Vitus has lovely stained glass, and when we were there, the sunlight was coming in at just the right angles to scatter the colors across the church walls. One thing Emma and I noted that the churches we visited all had clear glass towards the rooflines, so that more natural light could come in. I liked this feature.

Next, we wandered to Golden Lane. This has the original houses and looks outs of the 16th century castles servants and/or marksmen. The houses are tiny and all still host their original beam work and stairs. They were occupied as late as WWII. Now they host souvenir shops that are not too exciting, but at least it means you have a reason to wander in and get a sense of what it must have been like to live in one.

After we finished touring the castle and grounds - which took most of the day - we walked down to Mala Strana. We were pretty tired by this time, so we sat outside in a sunlit courtyard and had a drink....Czech beer, of course, light and flavorful. Czechs love their beer and are very, very proud of it. The average consumption in CZ is over 170 litres for every man, woman and child - by comparison, the Australians and Germans - considered to be the worlds most prolific beer drinkers - only average about 130 litres each, so clearly, the title rightfully belongs to the Czechs.

We wander towards the river again, and Emma gets very excited by the little tour boats on the rivers and the canals. So we decide since our feet hurt anyway, we'll take one of the boat tours. It was a pleasant way to see the city and even more so, since we weren't on one of the big boats. The canals are lovely, too. We would have loved to have taken dinner along the river, but it was out of our price range - the most expensive restaurant in the city, Kampapark, is located there and you would be lucky to get away with spending less then $150/per person for dinner there. So after the boat, we walk across the famous Charles Bridge back to mala Strana and look for a more reasonably priced restaurant which also suits Emma's vegetarian diet.