Euro Trip Day 39: I have some catching up to do!

I’m really going to try really really hard to simplify things here, since I really need to get caught up.

On Day 39 we slept in… I think travel fatigue is really starting to get to us, because we both wanted to see Prague, but neither of us was enthused about going anywhere. So we opted to stay an extra night. Good idea.

We finally dragged ourselves out of the room and wandered the city for a bit. It was SO FLIPPING HOT. I know it’s not as hot as Sacramento, but at least at home pretty much everywhere has a/c. In Prague, not so much.

Want to know the best place to hang out? Near one of the vents for the subway. It was like a gigantic outdoor air conditioner. Greatest thing EVER.

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Anyone notice anything interesting about this street? There are NO STREETLIGHTS. OR STOP SIGNS. And this is a fairly large street in the middle of downtown Prague. I'm really not sure how more accidents don't happen here -- maybe they just pay more attention? CRAZY.

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See if you can guess why I took a picture of this. Hint: I'm amused by it. Give up? Well, the little devil that constantly resides on one of my shoulders wanted me to relocate this guy's bike to somewhere nearby just to give him an object lesson in what not to lock one's bike to. I didn't though... my nice side (the part of me that doesn't want to get arrested for bike thievery) won out.

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Around mid-afternoon, we met up with a tour guide for a free walking tour of the city — the guides work for tips, and we tipped quite well after enjoying the tour quite a bit. Our guide was an Irish college student, and she was flipping hilarious. I think she needs to be a high school teacher — she’s got the energy level down!

Our awesome tour guide standing in front of composer Antonin Dvorak's statue and reenacting the story of how the Nazis wanted to push the statue of composer Felix Mendelssohn off of the national music hall, only they didn't know what he looked like, so they figured that since he was Jewish he must have a big nose. So they went to push the statue with the biggest nose off, only to find out right at the last minute that it was really Wagner. Wagner, incidentally, happened to be Hitler's favorite composer. HA!

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See that small dried thing hanging up there? That's an arm, and it's hanging from high up a wall in the Church of St. James in Prague. As the legend goes, it belonged to a thief who tried to steal jewels from the statue of the Virgin Mary on the altar one night. But the statue miraculously came to life, grabbed his hand, and wouldn't let go. The thief had to wait until the next morning when the monks showed up. The monks tried to separate the thief from the Madonna, but they couldn't, and they weren't about to break the statue. So they cut his arm off instead. Right as they finished cutting it, the statue came back to life and released his arm, and then turned back into a statue again. The monks hung the arm to remember this event and as a warning for other thieves, and there it still hangs, some 400 years later.

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Rather kafkaesque statue of Franz Kafka (he's the one sitting on the headless dude's shoulders.)

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After the tour, John headed home and I headed to a classical music concert at an old church. It was by far the most expensive event ticket I bought this trip, and I hate to say it, but I was kind of disappointed. The music was a treat, and it was at an 800-year-old church with great acoustics, but (a) there was an American woman behind me who talked incessantly through almost the whole concert, and (b) the musicians kind of rushed through everything. They played the most popular parts of things, rather than the entire piece, and they went fast for a lot of stuff. The flier said they’d play Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, but they only played Spring, Die Moldau was TOTALLY cut short, and that was the absolute fastest rendition of Pachelbel’s Canon I think I’ve ever heard.

Don’t get me wrong — I definitely enjoyed it, but I don’t know that I would have spent that much money twice. Oh well. (I actually almost cornered the talking woman after the concert and told her that I didn’t know how much she was spending on her trip, but my ticket that night represented a significant portion of my daily budget, and I really didn’t appreciate listening to her talk throughout the concert. But I chickened out.)

I do have to say that my favorite part was hearing them play (a piece of) Smetana’s “Die Moldau”, since Smetana was Czech and the Moldau is another name for the Vltava River that runs through Prague. It was better than hearing “Blue Danube Waltz” when I was on the island in the middle of the Danube in Budapest, since this was live and that was a recording. (Although that was still pretty freaking awesome.) :-)

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Here’s a playlist to most of the rest of the concert. And Mom, before you get worried about copyright, there were a number of people in the (very small) audience openly recording this, and no one stopped them… so I guess it’s kosher. :-)

Hmmm, apparently I can embed the playlist into this blog post. Click on the arrows on the right or left sides of the video below to scroll through all of the videos. Fun!

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After the concert, I still had daylight and energy left, so I walked over to Old Town and climbed up the Old Town City Hall tower to get a view of the city. I was hoping to get some decent sunset shots, but it was really hazy, so I just enjoyed the views for about 30 minutes before heading down.

View of the Old Town Square from on top of the Old Town City Hall. I went to that church (Church of Our Lady Before Tyn) three different times, trying to go in and see it, but it was closed every single time. GRRRRRRR. I hate being deprived of a good Gothic church, darn it! :frownyface: Not like I haven't seen enough churches this trip. :-p

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View looking down.

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At the top of the tower, there were a bunch of informational signs about things you could see from the tower. Read the English translation of this one -- the last two lines are pretty funny. :-)

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As the sun set, I hopped a metro and then a tram to get back home, where John was waiting for me at the tram stop. I had a fun day, but I think getting off of that tram and seeing him there waiting for me was the best part. :-)

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