Good St Wencescescesceslas Square and beyond

I have just realised that I failed to blog my last few photos of Prague. So here they are. 

We examined St Wencescescesceslas Square, and admired the bullet holes left in the museum by some careless Russians. We then took a tram ("Ting! Ting! Ting! Went the bell!") south to look at the famous Dancing House, and agreed that it did indeed bear a striking resemblance to Fred and Ginger, provided that they had no arms, Ginger had no head, they had eight skinny legs between them, and were made of concrete and glass.

We has a picnic outside what was either an armadillo farm with artwork or a theatre (the money was on armadillos) and ambled back to our hotel via a route which included as many bridges as possible.

Art. And the reflection of the Armadillo Farm.

The graffiti in Prague was somewhat verbose

Scary babies with barcode faces

Weirdest fountain EVAH. The two gentlemen are urinating into a pond which is the shape of the Czech Republic. Their manhoods are adjustable, and they shimmy from the hip to provide variety in their spray patterns.

Then the epic Game of Transport commenced! It began with charades in a ticket office (public transport in Prague required one's luggage to also have a ticket. Mr S knew enough Czech to ask for the tickets we needed, but we didn't know the word for "suitcase" and every mime-and-point we tried resulted in a confused Czech woman offering us a carrier bag with our tickets). It then continued with a metro, a bus, an aeroplane which flew over some ferries, a taxi and a private car. Add that to the tram earlier, and we believe we collected the set that day!

Yes, 1938.

I can see your hotel from here!

Since we'd only had time to explore half the castle the previous day, and our tickets were valid for two days, we decided to trundle back across the Charles Bridge and continue our investigations, including climbing what my notebook assures me was called "The Big Fekov Tower".

The peaceful tranquillity of the Charles Bridge

The *other* Prague Castle

There! That's our hotel! Just there!

 We then trundled home via the odd brewery or two, plus a dumpling stop.

The Defenestration of Miffy and the Mysterious Case of the Vanishing Pub

 We spent much of the Sunday exploring the castle. Since it was some way up the hill from our hotel (we were staying in the Hotel Hastal in the Old Town), and Miffy has a bad knee, Miffy got a tram whilst we walked. This inspired me to sing the Trolley Song interminably for the rest of the weekend. Sorry Miffy.

The castle provided a wealth of entertainment, from the Changing Of The Guards (we spotted that they had those metallic tap-shoe things on their soles so that they could make a really good stompy sound) to the famous Defenestration window and the crossbow shooting gallery.

The Defenestration of Miffy

How to prevent further defenestrations

Pretty books

This poor Noble Knight appears to have his bottom on backwards...

 

We were impressed with the resourcefulness of the angel on the left selling souvenir tea-towels

Mock my facial expression all you like - I can get a bullseye with this thing!

The consequences of taking honey, money, and inadequate contraception?

I liked this "art". But then I think H.R. Giger's Alien is cute, so who am I to judge?

 Following our Castle exploration, we retired to a Mediaeval Cellar which promised BEER and Mediaeval Dancers (conjuring up a confusing mental image of chain-mail nipple tassels). The beer was indeed good, but we were too early for the dancers, and had Places to be.

The juxtaposition of the Brian Blessed-alike and "Mediaeval Show Dancer" is frightening

 Now, the Czech nation are, according to Karel, the greatest consumers of alcohol per head in Europe, and are somewhat proud of this fact. Whilst exploring the city, we had seen advertisements for many pub crawls ("The best night you'll never remember!"), and, it being St. Patrick's Day, the locals were enthusiastically gearing up for a celebration of drinking and more drinking. We opted to ignore the local Irish pub, and the local English pub, and thought we'd go for a pre-dinner drink in the Beer Museum Bar (since there were still 22 of the 30 beers on tap to be tasted), and thence to the restaurant we'd booked for dinner. We walked down the street, got to the end, and though "that's silly, we must have walked straight past it".

Students. St Patrick's Day. 'Nuff Said.

 We walked back down the street, chatting. We got to the other end. Silly us, still failed to spot the bar. Walk back down the street, looking very carefully this time. Nope, the bar has vanished! On the other hand, none of us remembered that Irish Pub having been there yesterday. The Irish Pub claiming to have 30 beers on tap...

On closer examination, it turned out to indeed be the Beer Museum Bar. In the past twenty-four hours, it had undergone a complete makeover including green carpets, a new name, sign and frontage, and a selection of moody black-and-white photos of Ireland plastered all over the walls. Serious dedication to drinking, the Czechs. But at least the beer was as fine as ever.

From thence we wibbled to U Sadlu, where we consumed a vast amount of protein, discussed the evolution of even breasts (well, uneven ones would lead to running in circles, and therefore those afflicted would be less likely to escape predation), and made little "Exterminate" noises with the Dalek salt-and-pepper pots. Oh, and possibly consumed more beer.

I lift my eyes to the rooflines

If, like me, you like looking up at the little details on buildings,* then Prague is a fantastic city.

A statue honouring Fearless Firefighters...

...and their Fearful Customers

We spent the morning ambling around Prague, guided by Miffy and an over-caffienated youth named Karel.

Tour Guide Miffy

Tour Guide Karel, explaining how the importance of keys during the Velvet Revolution

 Then we ambled a bit more.

Probably the best bit of the otherwise over-hyped Famous Prague Clock

 

Actually a synagogue, despite looking like a mosque (built with funds from an Islamic charity).

Note the lower clock is in Hebrew, and so the hands are backwards

There was much callipygian statuary

Standard Charles Bridge tourist shot

Ditto

Apparently the opera Don Giovanni (which this statue commemorates) features Dementors. Or Nazgul. I forget which.

Having done that, we headed for the rather superb Beer Museum Pub ("30 Beers on tap!"), before a reviving meal of dumplings followed by a less-reviving bottle of Becherovka.

*For instance, a very posh restaurant in Bishopsgate sports a jaunty gold beaver weathervane, because it used to be the Hudson Bay Company's London offices. Not many people notice it.

All aboard the not-quite Orient Express!

As I said, last weekend we were in Prague. Now, it is possible to fly to Prague in a matter of a couple of hours, but that method was deemed boring, and far too simple. Instead, we felt it was much better to get a train to St. Pancras, a train from St. Pancras to Brussels, run hell-for-leather to another platform (not the platform which the helpful Eurostar announcement had told us) to catch a train to Cologne. Once in Cologne, we had time to find a jolly nice restaurant where I wrote "Schönsten = sossidge!" in my notebook, so it must have been important (or there was BEER), before it was back to the station to board a sleeper to Prague.

Every mod con - electricity *and* a sink!

Due to the many stops in the night (honestly, who wants to catch a sleeper to Berlin and arrive at three in the morning?), I ignored my alarm when it went off, and failed to see the really pretty view, but Miffy assured us it had been glorious. By the time I got up, we were running alongside a river, through a foggy valley which was nonetheless quite scenic.