Here are some things we saw along the way:
This is the Romanian Embassy. We loved the statues that are holding up the building. As the week went on, we became accustomed to seeing these kinds of buildings and stopped taking so many pictures.
Of course I had to take a picture of this gas station when we noticed that it had a parrot as its logo!
We also saw the following picture in a window display. Brian knows how creepy I find this, but he took a picture and made me promise to put it on my blog.
This store was on our way from our hotel to Old Town Square, so we passed it regularly. What a combination! Looking for some sheet music or a skateboard? Here's your place!
We spent the morning in the Prague Castle District, including St. Vitus Cathedral. Here I am on the grounds, rubbing the head of a little figure. There are tons of superstitions surrounding various statues around town. Earlier that day, we saw a professional Czech businesswoman walking across the Charles Bridge to get to work. At a few statues, she stopped and rubbed specific parts. I'm not sure why this particular statue is rubbed (luck, perhaps? I hope it's for something good!) but when we saw that part was golden, we took this picture.
Inside St. Vitus Cathedral, you can walk up one of the towers, where there is a great view of Prague. Because it wasn't the busy season, we were able to get up there in about 10 minutes.
This is a stained glass window designed by Alfonse Mucha. We thought it was very beautiful, although certainly in a much different style than the rest of the windows.
Towards the end of Golden Lane, there is a small torture museum. Here is Brian pretending to be shackled in this full body torture device.
Along Petrin Hill, there is a monument to the victims of Communism. I think the inscription can explain this much better than I could.
Here's Brian, trying to find the Lennon Wall. We found it, but not today!
This is an outside picture of the little cafe where we had lunch, in the Loreta district. We had pizza, and they brought the pizzas out whole, giving us the utensil to cut it ourselves.
After lunch we visited a library and looked into a monastery. Apparently you have to arrange a tour of the library ahead of time, but they still took our money and we could look into it. We were a bit disappointed about this!
Here I am sitting next to a statue that was on a bench. Nothing screams "tourist!" like taking one of these pictures:
Here is a picture showing the vendors on the Charles Bridge. We were a little disappointed in how touristy certain parts of Prague were.
Here is Brian, consulting the guidebook, trying to figure out which way to go:
This stone said "toilet" on it. We're not quite sure how that would have worked. If you read through this entire blog, you will see a progression of different toilets, assuming that's what this really is!
And here is a sign showing the different prohibitions on the Castle Grounds. Brian claims to have seen a sign on the first day somewhere banning ice cream, guns, and strollers. We never could find that again and we're wondering if the "gun" wasn't really something else. In any case, these banning signs were all over. With the temperatures we were facing, there was really no danger from ice cream!
We thought this was funny, so we took a picture. The side of this car advertises sightseeing tours. BUT, the car is so loud, there is no way you'd be able to hear anything! This single person was taking a tour, and passed us 4 different times in about 15 minutes as we were walking around the Loreta district. Finally I told Brian that if we saw this guy one more time, I was taking his picture and he was ending up on the blog!
This is another picture that I wasn't intending on putting in the blog originally. I can't imagine the outcry that would happen if someone tried to put this fountain up in my hometown! So, I wanted to get a picture of this fountain, but this lady would not leave. She posed by the fountain for at least 5 minutes. We could not figure out why, so finally we ended up taking her picture and decided to put her on the blog since it appears that's what she wanted!
As we were walking towards the Castle, we passed the Klemintinum, which is the Czech National Library. There had been advertisements all around town for an exhibit they were having on the Codex Gigas, so we decided to stop in and see it.
We had dinner at a restaurant named 22. The meal was quite good.
Finally, here I am posing in what must be among the smallest openings ever (there is a restaurant in the back).
You can see the walk/don't walk sign in the background. This was also different from what we're used to. There is a slow clicking that occurs continually, and when you get the walk sign, the clicking speeds up. We imagined this might be there to help the blind, but the fast pace of the clicks made us cross the street in a quick manner!
And here is Brian, consulting the map and pointing the way back to our hotel.
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