Beautiful Prague - part 2

We were so tired the night before from the lack of sleep and all the walking around town that we basically crashed only to be woken up by the alarm at 8:30am. We were checking out today at noon. We showered and headed downstairs breakfast by 9:30am. The breakfast setting at the Jelini Dvur is small and cozy and comfortable although the choice of Macaroni instead of eggs for breakfast was a bit surprising. That didn’t stop up from filling ourselves up to our nostrils with oj, cereal, coffee/tea and Macaroni.

On coming back to our room, we finished our packing and just chilled out for a couple of hours before checking out at noon. We left one of our bags at the reception and headed out to visit the castle. We had 6 hours and a few things on our list to tick off today. The castle was a short 5 minute walk from the hotel. The castle was a mix of different architectural styles having been refurbished more times than I can count on my hands. It hosts a mini city inside it, galleries, museums, cafes, guardhouses, church etc. We walked the perimeter of the castle, appreciating the view of the city from on top of the hill and walking through an outdoor photo gallery.

The steps from the castle lead to the Lesser Town. Don’t go by the English. It is not lesser than anything else in Prague. Pretty, quaint and well preserved old town at the gates of the castle with cobbled streets, old buildings, fancy stores and cafe’s adding the new touch while still keeping the spirit of the city the way it was in the days gone by. By the way, watch out for the guy hanging out of a ground level window scaring people.

Prague seems to have lived through its shares of fights with tyrants and oppression. Mean kings, the second world war and then the communist “friends”. One voice that acted as a voice against oppression and stood for freedom against the red army for the Czech was John Lennon’s. There is a huge tribute to the legend in the form of a Lennon wall. The wall itself belongs to a monastery who check the wall for indecent content from time to time but allow all things Lennon to remain. There is a spitting image of Lennon carved on the wall. The fans even had a mock burial when Lennon passed on.

Frank Gehry’s designed some crazy buildings. But the dancing house in Prague has to rank as one of the craziest. This one in Prague seems like a safety hazard waiting to happen. I bet if this were in the US, some woman who did not quite see the bent parts of the building would have slipped and fallen and sued Gehry for gazillions of dollars for being dumb.

We had the urge to explore some non touristy parts of Prague and go where no tourist had gone before. We decided to catch the first bus that showed up and go to the end of the line. Boy did we pick the right bus. The tour went through some of the prettiest residential areas of Prague and ended up at, what seemed like, the old forgotten ruin of the Strahov Stadium on top of the Petřín hill. On our way down from the hill we had a late lunch at a very quaint looking pizzeria. The two us shared a salad and pasta.

Taking a roundabout route and a couple of bus changes, we decided to pay the Jewish quarter a visit. There are 6 different synagogues close to each other in this small corner of old Prague. Our plan was to visit a couple of them and buy some bohemian crystal piece from the many stores in the area. Why buy from this area? Well, for some reason the Jewish folks here are more than happy to discount and one can talk a nice bargain if one was familiar with the art. Having been an unwilling apprentice to my mom’s daily shopping exploits in Delhi for the first 20 years of my life, I had picked up a trick or two.

Top tip: The shops in this area sell things a little bit cheaper than the other parts of Prague anyway and easily about 25% less than the duty free stores at the airports. After about 20 minutes of shopping, we negotiated a 600czk for a piece that was marked at 690czk but as with every negotiation, I walked away thinking that I should have beaten them down that little bit more.

Sorry for the digression, getting back to the synagogues now. The old-new synagogue (ONS) supposedly has the remains of an ancient daemon Golem, created from clay by a powerful Rabi about 800 years ago to protect the Jewish population of Prague from a tyrant ruler. Legend has it that the daemon had to be put down by the Rabi because it eventually turned on the Jewish folk after demolishing the forces of the evil king and also that it can and will be resurrected if needed. I wonder where it was in the late 1930s. We also visited another pretty looking Synagogue very close to the ONS.

That was pretty much the last planned stop on our trip. We walked to the National Museum to take our subway back and came across a gallery of pictures of 1968 Prague.

We had just enough time to head back to the hotel, pick up our stuff and get to the airport. We go there but did the plane take off on time? That’s a whole different story for another post.