Last legs of a European Odyssey

Saturday 2nd
After leaving Cesky Krumlov we headed straight to Prague, unfortunately the weather followed us and we arrived to quite cold (needed our winter woollies on again, the few that we have) and wet conditions and located our camp on an island in the middle of Vltava River which flows thru the centre of Prague.

The view across the river from our van
View of the city from the ferry

Sunday 3rd
We caught the ferry along the river towards the centre. It couldn’t go all the way up the river to the centre as there are a couple of spillways between here and the Charles Bridge.

Charles Bridge and Castle in the background
Another view of Charles Bridge and Castle
Spillway along River Vltava

By now we had to don the umbrella but hey this is Europe and we have considered ourselves very lucky so far not to have been effected by rain elsewhere.
We decided to walk on up the hill and explore the Prague Castle,

Courtyard'Square to the rebuilt castle
Guards on duty

Stained Glass window in St Vitus Cathedral within the Castle
Ceremonial Hall in the Castle Changing of the guard

Statue of much interest - can you see why- we were looking to find him and was the last thing we saw on leaving the castle

View of Prague from the Castle

a huge area described as being the biggest castle complex in the world and feels and looks like a small town itself. After taking nearly 2 hours to explore our feet were starting to scream so of course it was lunch (v.late lunch) time to take a break. As the weather was cold and yucky we found a little restaurant and had to have the local speciality. Rob had a Goulash soup and I had an upmarket Goulash soup in a damper roll which included venison, so nice on a cold day. After this we scarped back along the riverside to catch the ferry that only runs every hour and the last one being 7.00pm from the city. It’s a long trip back if we miss the last one, as being on an island when you get to the point of our camp which would be about 3klms we would still have to go back a further 2kms to get over to the island and then walk the nearly 2kms back up again. No thank you.

Monday 4th
Again the touring was catching up with us and we were feeling a bit exhausted so decided to have a rest day, catch up with the family on Skype, do our blog and van maintenance (filling up water, emptying toilet cassette, all the exciting chores!!!) and just chill out. Much appreciated.

Tuesday 5th
Our little Sophia’s birthday today, so had to Skype her and sing Happy Birthday and then we headed back out on the ferry up town again. Today we were ready to explore the old town. Took a right turn at the Charles Bridge and walked our way up through the narrow streets till it opened up to the Staromestske nam – Old Town Square which is dominated by the Tyn Church, St Nicholas Church and the Old Town Hall Clock Tower with the astronomical clock. It was just on midday so we thought we’d join the rest of the throng standing around for the magical happening of the astronomical clock. I couldn’t believe how short and un-spectacular this event was. On the stroke of the hour a couple of doors opened and the 12 apostles slid by and a rooster sort of crowed and 4 figures representing vanity, greed, death (a bell ringing skeleton) and ?? and it’s all over in 30 seconds no where as good as the clock tower in Munich but for Prague it is special for its history and mechanical movement.

the clock tower and Astronomical clock

Crowds milling to see the Astronomical clock
In the Old Town Square

St Nicholas Church Chandelier

We joined a (supposedly) free 3 hour walking tour. Our guide was very theatrical about his storytelling and did not fail to inform us that although it’s a free tour he would not be against receiving a tip at the end and also at the conclusion again mentioned that he’s a professional tour guide and would accept tips but not of the coin type.

Our tour guide

I have to say the tour was very enlightening and filled in a lot of the gaps of knowledge that we needed. We did the Stare Mesto (Old town) Novo Mesto (New town) and the Jewish Quarter even though it was 3 hours it was not too exhaustive. We visited the Old Jewish Cemetery which you don’t actually go in, you look at it from the street but it is in a very evocative corner of the Jewish area.

Jewish Cemetery

It is only about 100ft long and 30ft wide and the first bodies were supposedly buried there from about 1439 but its mentioned that it has over 12,000 graves buried in it and our guide says that those who know reckon there’s over 100,000 (so who knows??) and as they ran out of room and the Jews were not given any other land to create another cemetery they then covered that layer of graves, raising the headstones and started a new layer till there are about 12 layers of graves each time raising the headstones to the top, consequently the headstones on top now are so chock a block they look like sharks teeth standing upwards right next to each other with the ground level now about 4 metres above street level. It ceased being used in about 1787.

At the end of the tour and 400 Kronas (about $22.00) later we took our leave and headed back to the marina where there is an old ferry boat permanently moored there as a restaurant. We’d earmarked it earlier that it would be nice to dine there to finish off our Prague experience so it was Veal knuckle, a Czeck specialty washed down with a lovely cold local chardonnay and a local black beer for Rob. Also we could keep an eye out for the ferry to make sure we didn’t miss the last ferry back to camp.

Enjoying veal knuckle
The ferry boat restaurant Our last supper in Prague
Our ferry transport and captain

PS: while waiting to join the walking tour we came across my favourite store ‘Cartier’ and spied the diamond ring I’d like to take home with me worth $½Mil-AUD……..very nice.

Found my piece of jewellery I'd like in the Cartier store worth half a mil

Wednesday 6th
Off on our way again to our 2nd last port of call on our European Odyssey, Dresden.

On the road to Dresden