Monday 19 August – Prague

Breakfast a bit pricey at the hotel so we thought we would just get something from the supermarket next door. A couple of pastries, some bread rolls and water was about $8, pretty good value.

We decided that the main thing we wanted to see was the Prague Castle. Anything else would be a bonus along the way.

It was spitting a little bit along the way so we were sometimes using the umbrella and sometimes not. I had Apple Maps (Siri) directions to a Convent on the way (little bit out of the way) to the Castle. Off we set – Ros wanted a coffee so we kept an eye out for a coffee shop.

The GPS seemed to be playing up a bit because every now and then on the map it would show I was at another street. Oh well, it would fix itself I’m sure. Well, after walking for nearly an hour we came across this area that looked familiar. I jokingly said to Ros “what would you say if we had walked around in circles”. We had. I track our route on an app so I could clearly see the big 4km, 1 hour, walk we had done around back to where we started. Oh dear!

By this stage we would head directly to the Castle instead. Ros reverted to the paper map and off we went with Ros in charge and made it there in 35 minutes and did not get lost. Ros thinks Siri has it out for her as she continually sends us up the garden path.

My aunt and uncle, Louise and David, mentioned they had stayed in an apartment above KFC near the square. Wandering past, we paused to take a photo. Well, we got to the bottom of the big hill at the bottom of the castle. From far away when we were walking we could see all these people going up and down the vineyard. That was the pathway up!

It was lots of steps followed by an incline pathway, then more steps. After arriving at the top and going through the scanner, we went to the coffee shop and had some morning tea. The rain had come back in a few showers, but nothing sustained and not too heavy.

Prague Castle was like a mini town within a fortress wall. There were a number of different buildings that you could access, pending which ticket you bought. We found that out after we tried to buy a ticket at the first building and were directed to another area. This other area had an enormous line which didn’t seem to be moving too fast. We got in and selected our ticket option – the one that would take us into most. There were a few buildings we could not access as they were additional cost at each of them. No thanks, standard is more than plenty.

The first one was the hall and a couple of rooms in the Palace. It literally only took about 15 minutes to go through. Apparently you had to purchase a ‘licence’ to take photos. We had tickets to the next part as well, which was more the history of the place. There were not many people going into this one at all. The history of the place was interesting as they show you a lot of artefacts from when Prague was settled in the early ages through to current times.

Following this we ventured up to the cathedral. Earlier in the day the line had been long, but it wasn’t too bad when we got there. You could go in and see the cathedral without a ticket, but if you wanted to get closer you had to have a ticket, which we did. Yet another cathedral that had stunning stained glass windows, chapels to the sides of the main cathedral along with tombs.

We were getting quite tired, but still had a couple of areas to go. On the way out of the cathedral we saw the guards marching off to where they would do the changing of the guards. They were marching very quickly for us and quickly outran us. The next stop was a chapel for a Saint. It was very modest but again very old.

The last area we saw was the ‘Golden Lane’. These were a series of buildings showing how certain people and occupations lived. Lots of people were cramped into the buildings and our feet were aching so we preferred to find a place to stop and react rather than fight the crowds in the small entrances of buildings. We found the exit and headed to a shop where they had some drinks and a place to stop for a while. Freshly squeezed orange juice gave us the boost we were looking for before our long way back to the hotel.

Rather than the bridge we walked over on, we walked a fair way so that we could go over the famous Charles foot bridge. This was very busy with statues along both sides. Part way across we stopped and looked at the barge that was on the river. They were replacing the protection logs in front of the pylons – which looked like it would stop any boat hitting and damaging the pylons.

Finally back at the hotel, around 2pm, we had a rest for a couple of hours. We had seen so much but wanted to go out to the pub we had seen for dinner. We hadn’t found any sunscreen but we saw on the map where a chemist was – in the big shopping centre. The chemist had some 50+ so we grabbed that and headed off. We were walking off to a clothes shop so Ros could get a new top. During this, we came across a phone shop that had protective screens that Ros needed. While waiting for them to install it, we heard this sound like a crying baby getting louder and louder. It was a woman in her 20s. As she was past us, she changed to another sound. The guy in the shop, deadpan said “I know her, she’s crazy”. Enough said!

As Ros went into H&M, I was on a mission – to try and catch up to Ros in steps. She had done about 23,000 so far today and I had done 21,000. So I set off around the floor of the shopping centre, going up to other floors and back down etc. After a couple of laps, I got bored with it and stopped – still about 1000 short of Ros haha.

We went to the pub for dinner – pork knuckle for me and schnitzel for Ros. Both dishes were fantastic. After stuffing ourselves yet again we went back to the hotel to pack as our train left at 7:50 the next morning.