Day 17 - Saturday, Sept 6 - Prague

 Thankfully the rain stopped by the time we needed to leave at 8:20.

The excursion for today was a 5-hour walking tour of Prague - no vehicles are allowed in the old part of the city. It was a bit grueling, with only one bathroom break - I got in over 9,000 steps by the time we finished a little after 1pm.

Our guide took us from the hotel into the old city. We stopped at a square with a monument to Jon Hus who was an early religious reformer in the 1300s who opposed many of the teachings of the Catholic church, very similar to Martin Luther over a hundred years later. He was excommunicated and when he refused to recant, he was burned at the stake in 1416. I was baptized in the Moravian Church which had its origin with Jon Hus.

From there we went to the Jewish quarter where there is the oldest active synagogue, dating to the 1200s. It was a ghetto where the Jews were very crowded and not allowed to live outside until the 1500s. In WWII, most of the Jews were deported to concentration camps and very few returned.

From there to the famous astronomical clock from 1410 which can tell the phases of the moon. Every hour, two little windows open and figures of the apostles move around behind them as the clock chimes. It is a big event with hundreds of people gathering to see it. It is very similar to one in Munich.

Then to the Charles bridge, started by King Charles in the 1300s but not finished until after his death. It was the first bridge linking the cities on each side of the river until more bridges were built in the 1700s.

Thankfully, on the other side of the bridge we were able to take Viking bus to the top of the mountain to visit the castle grounds. The first church was Romanesque, constructed by St. Wenceslaus I around 927, followed by a larger church in 1060 and finally, St. Vitas Basilica was started at the site in 1344 although it wasn't finished until the 1900s!

A short bus ride back to the hotel and a nap before going out for lunch.

The Communism Museum is at the end of our block and was quite interesting / depressing. It started with the philosophy of communism by Marx and Engels, then its implementation in Russia by Lenin in 1917. Czechoslovakia was formed in 1918 after WWII. Many of the people worked very long hours and were still very poor, unable to feed their families. Children as young as 5 had to work. This created fertile ground for the growth of the communist party. After WWII, it came under the influence of the Soviet Union and at first it didn't seem so bad until people's rights were removed, property was seized and it became a totalitarian regime. We remember the Prague Spring in 1968 when people tried to rise up against the communist regime and it was brutally suppressed by troops and tanks coming from the Soviet Union, killing many people. It wasn't until 1989 when other communist countries were breaking apart that they were finally able to free themselves but not without considerable violence and bloodshed.

We decided to go out for a late dinner and check out the city lights around 8pm.

When we got to the Republic Square near our hotel we were surprised to hear cheering and clapping. Just as we arrived, the first runners of the Prague nighttime 10K race were approaching the finish line - what timing! The winner actually set a new Czech record of just over 31 minutes - pretty fast.

We both had beef goulash with gravy and bohemian dumplings although the dumplings seemed more like rounds of white bread. The city was really bustling on a Saturday night and many of the shops were still open. On the way back we had a Trdelnik cone with soft serve, strawberries and pistachio.

We managed to get a beautiful photo of a church.

Prague Astronomical Clock
Figures appear in the to little windows above the top dial

St. Vitus Basilica
Right side is from 14th century, left side from 20th century






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