Prague - Days 3 & 4

Day 3 Prague

We really enjoyed the remainder of our time in Prague. On our third day, we took a tour of Staropramen, the Molson Coors owned brewery. Staropramen has been made since 1869. The tour was done by audio in different rooms that took you through the history, beer making process, packaging and tasting of course! We enjoyed beer at the end of our tour, dark, amber and Granat - a beer based on the original 1884 recipe (so yummy).

After the tour, we walked back up near Prague castle to get our overnight train tickets to Vienna and to do a little shopping. We bought a few reminders of our time in Prague and found a café for us to enjoy lunch (and beer). Then we went to the John Lennon wall - a place that is dedicated to Lennon and is constantly being added to with graffiti. Our last stop of the afternoon was the Wallenstein palace gardens. These gardens were beautiful and a great place to enjoy some green space in the middle of the city.

That night we went to a philharmonic performance at the Rudolfinum. Three violinists and two cellists - they were amazing. They played for a little over an hour but the time just flew by. When the performance was finished, we went across the street to an Italian restaurant on the water. The views of Prague castle were amazing and our dinner was so yummy! Our servers were a lot of fun and we relaxed and enjoyed the beautiful night.

Day 4 Prague

In the morning we packed up and took our bags to the train station. Then it was back up toward the Jewish Quarter to see the St. Agnes convent/museum. Also saw an interesting statue of Franz Kafka. We "czeched" the top ten places in our guide book off and were pretty proud of ourselves.

We then walked back to the old town square to enjoy sausage and beer from a street vendor. Yummy! We moved over toward a restaurant area on the square and sat outside to people watch and enjoyed hot wine (it was chilly that day). When we finished our wine, we went to St. James Cathedral to look at the organ. We wandered around the square some more and then found a beer hall, U Tri Ruzi, to relax and pass the time. We were getting really tired and our feet were killing us! We had some good food and beer and hung out for awhile. We discussed how much we had been walking - over 35 miles in 4 days and swore that we were going to take it a little easier in Vienna (more on that later!).

We started slowly making our way back to the train station. Wandered around a mall area to kill some time and then went to a cute café,  for coffee with Baileys. At about 10:30 p.m. we went back to the station to get our luggage and find the train. Off to Vienna!

Vienna

Took the night train to Vienna. Will post our day 3-4 Prague soon!

Prague Day 2

We had another packed day and walked 6.5 miles around Prague. We started the day with breakfast in a really cute café then went up to the National Theatre. Along the way we saw Kranner's fountain, is a neo-Gothic monument on the Smenata enbankment designed by the architect Josef Kranner and the allegorical sculptures were made by Josef Max.

Rudolfinum

Pinkas Synagogue wall

Next we went to the Rudolfinum, a concert venue built in 1876, and bought tickets to see a concert of Mozart, Bach and more, which we are doing Monday night. After buying the tickets, we went to the Jewish Quarter. We visited the Pinkas Synagogue, founded in 1479, where they have inscribed the names of the 77,297 Jewish Czechoslovak citizens who were deported to various extermination camps and did not return. It was a very sobering experience, especially when we saw the name Kuhn on the wall.


Old-New Synagogue

After the Pinkas, we went to the Old Jewish Cemetery, a place that was the only burial ground permitted to Jews for 300 years. You can see over 12,000 gravestones packed into this area but several times that number are thought to be buried there. Next was the Old-New Synagogue, built around 1270, is the oldest synagogue in Europe and is still the religious center for Prague's Jewish people today. You can see the chair Rabbi Low sat in, the rabbi who is thought to have created the Golem and later hid him in the rafters of the synagogue.

As we left the Jewish Quarter, we ran into people we knew from Denver Jean Miller and Sue Hartwell! Always entertaining when you are halfway around the world and run into people you know. After seeing them, we went and had beers and snacks in the Old Town Square.




Our Lady before Tyn

In front of the Astronomical Clock in Old Town

The Old Town Square is a beautiful place. There was so much going on - Prague is hosting the IIHF World Championships and they had a big screen set up on the square. We watched the astronomical clock chime 4 - it's a beautiful clock, but kind of creepy when everything starts moving! We had a lot of great picture opportunities on the square and Church of Our Lady before Tyn dominated the skyline.

We wandered around more and found a wine bar. We tried Czech wines and some local brandy. We decided to have a night in and bought bread, cheese, meats and chocolate and drank wine. It was quite delicious!


Prague Day 1

Our first full day in Prague (or Pre-goo as the guy who checked our bags in Denver called it) was fun. We walked over 9 miles!

We moved from Melanie's hotel over to our airbnb in New Town in the morning. The place is cute with great views of the city. We then left for Prague Castle. Took the tram most of the way and then climbed up the "hill" to the castle (if we didn't live in Colorado we would have called it a small mountain!). St. Vitus's Cathedral was a gothic masterpiece.

After the castle we walked the stag moat and went to the cathedral of St. Nicholas. The interior was so ornate and the frescos were beautiful. We walked through Little Quarter and stopped for wine and cheese.

We then headed to Wenceslas Square and stopped for drinks. We went back to New Quarter and decided on a beer hall, První Novomêstsky (11degree restaurant). Fried pork, stuffed chicken and pate was so yummy. Kristi had a taster flight of beer, light, dark, mixed and champagne beer; M&M drank the dark beer. We topped it off with apple strudel and delicious latte's.