Friday, September 30, 2011

2 of 3: Prague's Old Town

My friends,

We made it to Prague and MY GOODNESS, it's a beautiful place.

Kristin and I woke up again at 5 a.m. For the life of us, we can't get used to the time change! Our internal clocks are confused and mad at us.

Breakfast in Vienna and Prague have been amazing. Every morning we wake up and can't wait to eat cheeses and meats and fresh fruit for breakfast.

Here we are at 7 a.m. after being up for two hours eating breakfast at our adorable hotel in Prague.


We decided to try a guided tour and walked all the way to the Old Town area from our hotel. Here we are a little lost and turned around.



After finally making it to Old Town, we met up with our tour guide, Camilla, and our tour group, which included two Russian old men and a really old grandpa from Munich. We all spoke different languages! It was amazing how many languages Camilla could speak- Russian, English, German and Czech! I'm sure she knew more.

She started off the tour by explaining that Prague is split up into 4 different little towns: Old Town, New Town, Lesser Town and the Castle Town. Not sure if it's really called Castle Town, but it sounds good.

We started our three hour tour in Old Town.

Kristin and I spotted a ton of marionette shops and all day long we were singing the Sound of Music marionette song.

Nerds, I know.


All of the horses on the horse-drawn carriages were wearing funny hats that covered their ears. I loved them.


This was one of my favorite sights on our tour. This cathedral in Old Town looked like it had lots of homes built around it, but Camilla explained that the cathedral was actually build after the homes were already there. It connected to the King's house when he came to stay in Old town. He even had a little passageway that connected to the church so he didn't have to leave his house to go to church.


One of the famous sights in Prague is the astronomical clock. There are four different times on the clock, but Kristin and I still can't read the time to save our lives.


All of the homes were named. This house was named after the saint of hunting or something along those lines.


Right next door to the hunting house was the smiling rabbit house. Camilla explained that the neighbor must have been coy when naming his house because the rabbit is smiling at the hunter who can never catch him.


That tiny green building is the smallest hotel in Prague- three stories tall with a room per floor.

Cute!


After checking out Old Town and New Town, Camilla took us across the Charles Bridge.

It was absolutely breathtaking.


(We were looking forward to walking over the Charles Bridge all day!)


The Prague castle is in the background. It's the highest building on top of the hill.





This little monument on the Charles Bridge was dedicated to a secret-keeper in the Queen's entourage. This guy knew a lot of the Queen's secrets and when the King wanted to know what those secrets were, he didn't tell the King. The King tortured him to make him tell the secrets, but he stood strong and never told.

So the King threw him off the Charles Bridge.

Rude.

Now, when passerbys touch the cross in front of the monument, it's supposed to bring them the same kind of strength to hold true to their promises.


Hopefully we don't get thrown off the Charles Bridge...!

After our tour ended in Lesser Town, Kristin and I headed back to Old Town for some shopping at a market and to grab a glass of wine.

We found this adorable little restaurant with beautiful, beaded gourds as hanging, decorative lights.

I totally want to make one of those gourds. They're fantastic.

Exhausted after a full 12-hour day!


Kristin and I agreed that we loved taking the guided tour and want to do some more!

Looking forward to more exploring in Prague today!

xoxoxo

3 comments:

  1. I like the ear covers on the horses!

    You should look for these "cookies" they have in Prague that are wafer thin and are about the size of a small plate. I can't remember what they are called, but I was addicted to them!!!

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  2. oh my gosh. we had some, queen mary! they were so amazing!!

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