Prague

Saturday morning I flew to Prague and met up with Grace and Kyle at the airport. Their flight from Amsterdam was an hour earlier than mine. We booked an apartment through AirBnB. The host offered a driver to pick us up from the airport for 20 euros. The apartment was pretty, clean, nice and centrally located. It was around 10 minute walk to the old town.

After we checked in, we knew we had to take some business first, buy train tickets to Salzburg. We passed the National Museum on the way there. The weather was hot and sunny. I wasn't used to that anymore after living in London.

National Museum at the end of Wenceslas Square

St. Wenceslas, the patron saint of Bohemia

We didn't get lost on the way to the train station but we had to walk a bit longer than what we thought. I would say, dealing with Czechs is a bit interesting. We had a language barrier, which was expected, and not so friendly customer service. I think because they were communist country, and you can't just wipe out almost 45 years of being oppressed by communists easily. We were at the counter waiting for the guy to book the tickets. My sister grabbed a pamphlet behind the glass counter, and she was immediately got scolded... in Czech.

After that, we walked around and the first thing we want to see was Charles Bridge. It was a stone bridge that started the construction in 1357 under Charles IV and finished in 1500's. The bridge was pretty and there were a lot of statues along the sides of the bridge.

We didn't really have an agenda for that day, and we saw people taking a boat tour on the Vltara river. The perfect thing to do while the weather was nice. It was supposed to rain in the next two days.

Prague castles in the background

The gate at the end of Charles Bridge. The guys dressed in sailor outfits are the salesmen for the boat tour.

Not sure what this is. Just an old building.

Good view of the castles

King Charles IV statue. I was going to wait until they were done taking pictures, but the kids were so cute.

Preparing the boat for the river cruise tour

You get beer or lemonade, ice cream or ginger bread

Charles Bridge from a different angle

So Prague....

This is what they use to support the bridge, that collapsed during 1872 flood. The bridge again was restructured in 2002 after another horrible flood.

Canals

 After the cruise, we walked around the old town and got lost pretty bad. I told my sister that we had to sign up for a walking tour tomorrow. I didn't want to spend time getting lost anymore.

 It wasn't a total waste of time, we found St. Nicholas church, a classic Baroque church, which was very beautiful.

Inside the baroque style St. Nicholas church

Beautiful dome

You can go up to the second floor of the church. My guide book says you can go to the tower and see Prague from the top. I asked the church guard that didn't speak English much. He kept pointing to the stairs going up to this floor. Lost in translation. 

 The next day we were up early and ready to go by 9AM. We couldn't really sleep in because there was a construction across the street from the flat.

Finally, we found the astronomical clock.

Old Town square

The walking tour started in the old town square. There was another St. Nicholas church there.

Waiting for the walking tour to start.

You can take a tour in a horse carriage

Jan Hus memorial, Czech religious reformer before Luther.

 We had the best tour guide. I've had quite a few of walking tours in Europe. Adam was a 20 something Czech that is on summer break from a university in Edinburgh. He grew up in Czech Republic, South Africa and UK. He was full of energy and very animated. I loved listening to him. Not only he educated us about the history of the country, Soviet liberation, uprising during the communist years, and Czech after 1989, he added a lot of personal touch by talking his grandfathers who grew up and lived through many regimes. 

Adam at the beginning of tour. His energy level was 11 out 10 for the whole 3 hours.

St. Nicholas church

Tower behind the Astronomical clock, to the right is a garden. It was a building that was destroyed during WWII and never rebuilt.

Town Hall

Jewish quarter. Used to be a ghetto, now the most expensive part of town.

Cubism. House of the Black Madonna.

Half way of the tour. Took a break in a cafe. Their local beer was awesome. Very smooth finish.

White bean soup in a bread bowl. Grace and Kyle had Czech kielbasa.

Spanish synagogue

Hugo Boss store in the Jewish quarter. Ironic. Do you know that he designed the Nazi uniform?

Old New synagogue

Adam told us about the horror stories of the Ghetto. Over populated, no sewage system, poor hygiene.

Pinkas Synagogue where a Czech art teacher taught the kids to draw scary drawings of their Nazi experience, and later tell kids to shred them to remove them from their memory. And asked them to draw something that they are fond of, their family pictures, rainbow, green field, happy faces etc. She kept some of the paintings in two suitcases. One was later found and displayed in this synagogue.

When we were in the Jewish quarter, Adam asked us why Prague was sort of shielded from WWII destruction, except of a couple of buildings, the city didn't suffer too much damage. I know the first reason, that was because Hitler wanted to retire in Prague. The second reason was he wanted to make the Jewish quarter as a museum when the Jews were all extinct. What a sick man. Pinkas synagogue is now a museum. It is dedicated to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust from Bohemia and Moravia. Their names are inscribed on the walls of the main nave and adjoining areas. Madeline Albright, a Czech born American that became the first female US secretary of the states, found her relative's names on this wall.

Jan Palach, a young Czech, who set himself on fire to protest communism during 1963 uprising.

After the free walking of Old Town ended, we had a coffee break and continued on with Prague Castle walking tour. Unfortunately, Adam wasn't our tour guide. The weather turned for the worse, it was raining for the rest of the afternoon.

Monastery in Prague Castles

You can only buy the beer made by the monks here. Good beer with bitter finish

Honestly I don't remember every single details of the Prague castle. To me, there were a lot of old buildings. The weather was quite annoying with its continuous rain.

This is the interrogation house for people that were accused of various crimes during the communist years.

The pink building was still part of the monastery

The gate to the castle

Guards in front of the castles

St. Vitus Church is a Roman Catholic church that is the most important and biggest in the country. A lot of Czech kings and Roman Emperors were buried here.

St. Vitus Cathedral, a Gothic style church

Pretty impressive inside. It looks so grand with its high ceiling.

Beautiful glass windows

Vivienne, our Brit guide for the Prague Castle tour

Changing of the guards

Love the design

That night we went to see Romeo and Juliet ballet at the Opera House. The ticket was around 30 bucks per person, and we got seats at the balcony. So cheap compared to London. It would have been 3 or 4 times more expensive.

The Orchestra

During intermission

Good performance. I was hoping it was more like a Russian ballet, but it's more modern.

The next day we did the Jewish tour and went to the old cemetery and synagogues that we saw from the outside during yesterday's walking tour.

Franz Kafka, German Jewish writer that was most influential in Czech

After the Jewish tour, we were starving and were going to a Jewish restaurant. We had the address but couldn't find the place even though we were on the right street. We gave up and walked to the square and had lunch there. It was the best meal in Prague.

Roasted duck leg, pickled red cabbage and bread dumpling (taste like stuffing)

My sister had roasted chicken, and she said it was so moist and tasty

Chicken fillet and fries

At every hour, the clock was doing a little performance. The door was opened. Some figurines came out. People just flock in front of the clock to see this. Nothing special. That's what Adam told us yesterday. People waited in anticipation just for this?

A small market in the middle of Old Town

Local pastry. It's like their cinnamon buns. The dough was wrapped around a long wooden stick, baked on top of the burning charcoal, sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar.

Klementinum, where we went to see Mozart performance.

The next day was the day we left Prague and headed to Salzburg. I checked our train tickets again. They didn't look right because I didn't see the word Salzburg anywhere on the ticket. It looked like we only had tickets up to Linz. We went to the ticket counter again, and sure enough the guy messed up. We went to his counter again. I'm sure he remembered us. I'm not fond of him anyway... he looked like the nerdy guy with super thick glasses in "The Office Space", the one who ended up burning the office.

After we got the tickets sorted, we boarded the train, which was old and icky. There were a lot of stops in between. Finally we got to one station, I was expecting the train was going to move again but it made a complete stop. The train conductor went to our car and started yelling to get out... and pointed out and said bus repeatedly. We panicked and got out and found a couple of buses waiting outside of the station. A nice station worker who directed people and spoke English (Thank God), told us what bus to get on. Apparently the rail between this station and next had some damage and the train couldn't continue. We got on the bus and when we got to the train station, our train to Linz was already left since we were 20 minutes late.

This station was tiny and in the middle of no where. Funny that we saw another tourist that joined the Old Town walking tour. We recognized each other. He was stranded in this station also. We had an hour or so to kill, so I walked around with less than 100 Koruna in my pocket. My goal was to spend all of my money. My gosh... the food there was so cheap. I felt so rich.

We got on the train to Linz. I was dreading we were going to miss our train again to Salzburg. Luckily, the train was also delayed. We ran with our suitcases and got onboard just in time.

This is the train from Linz to Salzburg, so much nicer than the previous train. We're now in Austria.