TUESDAY, APRIL
22 – GOING WITH THE FLOW
(Sorry this posting is late. There was a thunder storm last night and all internet connections were lost until this morning!)
We bought day passes for the transportation system, zipped up to the
Castle on the Old # 22, and arrived before 9:00 am to avoid the tour
buses. Unfortunately, they were already there including a
particularly loud collection of Asians.
However, the Castle was
closed, so we headed straight to St. Vitus Cathedral, which looked
remarkably similar to the last fifty cathedrals we've seen throughout
Europe, the exception being some beautiful, modern
stained glass
windows. We had the place pretty much to ourselves, since the tours
only got to the free entry area where they bunched up like water
about to burst a dam. After, we managed to find St. George Basilica,
a beautifully simple Romanesque structure, and a street of tiny
houses (The Golden Lane) that various people once lived in including
Kafka back in 1917/8. The complex of buildings was so confusing,
however, that only after Bob poured over the map were we able to find
anything including our way out.
Thus far, the trip had been pretty much a disappointment, but then we
found the Lobkowicz Palace, which had large collections of paintings
including a Brueghel and a Cranach, and original signed manuscripts
by Mozart and Beethoven. The audio guide, which was delightfully
narrated by the current head of the family, traced his ancestors back
five or six hundred years. Most recently, the family lost everything
to the Nazis, regained it after the war, lost it again to the
Soviets, and finally regained it under the current Republic. I know
that our friend Karin would have loved to have seen the Delft display
which is part of the largest antique service in the world—all in
blue and white, of course!
After a genuine Czech lunch off the beaten path at a place Rick
recommended, we returned to the hotel via a funicular ride where we
fell into a sobering conversation with a young male clerk at our
hotel who worried that Putin may have designs on the Czech Republic
after he successfully “reclaims” the Ukraine. In this young man's
opinion, Europeans are too comfortable and complacent to resist
Putin's macho ambitions. Since the Republic is only fifteen or twenty
years old, many are still alive to remember the Bad Old Days.
Dinner was at U Kokra. Highly recommended on TripAdvisor, we found it good, but not great. However, we shared yet another great bottle of Czech wine (and a bottle of sparking water of course!)
