My trip in Prague

Dear Friends,

I've finally found the time to fulfill my long-planned idea of preparing a brief story depicting my stay in the Czech capital. As you may already know, I've had the opportunity to spend a whole week in Prague with several of my friends during this month, but because of the tremendous number of wonders we found in this marvellous city around each corner, even seven days felt short. We've left from Budapest on the 10th of August and after 7 hours of railway journey, we finally arrived at Hlavni Nadrazi (Main Railway Station) of Prague. After finding our way to our lodgings (we booked two rooms at a university dormitory to keep costs down) and managing to buy some food for our first dinner, we pretty rapidly fell asleep.

The next day was feeling real busy in the midst of a comletely unfamiliar, but encouragingly atmospheric city. We visited several Tourinform Offices and travel agencies to gather information and buy important stuff like mass-transport tickets and the tourists' best friend: a Prague Card. Valid for 4 days, it offers free entry or deeply reduced fares at around 50 famous monuments throughout town, including such widely known and adored sights as the St. Vitus Cathedral and Royal Palace in the Prazsky Hrad (Prague Castle). After a long afternoon walk at the bank of the Vlatva River and visiting the number-one symbol of the Czech capital, the 650 year-old, gothic Karluv Most or Charles Bridge, I was already starting to feel spellbound to Prague...!

The next morning found us climbing the Petrin Hill (this green haven is the highest spot overlooking the city) look-out tower's steep stairs...the view to come was breathtaking at least! (The first pic seen below was taken from there.) After getting back to the ground, we had some fun at the Petrin Mirror Maze, found also in this wondrous hilltop park. To conclude or day, we payed a visit to the Petrin Observatory only a couple of hundred meters away, where we had the rare opportunity to view dark spots on the Sun's surface through a 100-year-old, antique Zeiss telescope! Man, that was a thing to see!

We decided to discover the secrets of Prague Castle next - there were so many of them, that this venture used up a whole day! (Not that we were sorry about it...!) Amazed by the gothic beauty of St. Vitus' Cathedral, the spiritual symbol of the Czech nation, we walked around the spacious halls and dim staircases of the old Royal Castle, the seat of Bohemian princes and kings for ages. From one of it's chambers, I managed to capture a view I found feeling pretty typical to Prague as a "city with a hundred towers". (Second photo below!) We could even adore a duplicate of the Czech Coronation Jeweles, exhibited in the Vaclav Hall.

While a rainy day has followed with cloud cover gray as lead, we payed a visit to three museums. The National Museum, erected in the late 1800's hosts a rich variety of exhibitions including anthropological, zoologycal collections and stuff concerning natural sciences such as geology and mineralogy. The Museum of Decorative Arts held treasured pieces of clothing (such as wedding dresses), a gigantic collections of finely crafted, mostly luxurious clocks and pocketwatches, and tons of other stuff worthy of our interest. My favourite piece here was the rather bizarre, dark, pyramid-shaped "Clock of Communism", which had a hammer and sickle as indexes. Fun, right?

Spending one more day in the heart of the city, we climbed practically every possible tower located all around Stare Mesto (Old Town of Prague). Including these were the two wondrous gothic guard towers at both ends of Charles Bridge (see pic three below for an example of the view) , and the tower of the historical Town Hall, which hosts the world-famous Orloj astronomical clock, showing not just the time of day but positions of several planets of our solar system. (It was originally completed in the XV. century - impressive, don't you think?) In case you are interested, you can check out a small slice of Prague's dense rooftops visible from atop the town hall's tower and some details of the Orloj itself! (Pic four and five below.) Tired of climbing narrow spiral staircases, we ended up in a tidy little pub nearby, quenching our thirst with some fine Bohemian beer! (In the evening, we decided to revisit the right bank of river Vlatva with a friend of mine to capture some late lights, only to find ourselves under a pitch-black stormcloud, stretching threatningly above the city. Minutes before the rain began to pour wildly, I managed to get a reasonable shot depicting the river, Charles Bridge, and the Prague Castle bathing in decorative lighting, almost entirely covered by dark clouds. (See final pic below.)

We've spent our last day with a relaxing and rather entertaining walk in the Prague Zoo. Bordered partly by waters of the Vlatva itself, the animals inhabiting it can be all be delighted by a truly natural environment. The park itself is huge, spanning territory not only horizontally, but also vertically: the Zoo occupies a base level and a rocky cliff, which can be accessed by a ski-lift-like contraption!

Running through all the things above, I see a chance that you are getting real frustrated by now, so I conlude my travel-report here. We had a wonderful time in Prague - in case you can afford the time and costs getting there, this place is surely worth a bunch of (re)visits! We will try to get back as soon as we can!

Please feel free to browse through my fresh pics below!

See you soon and...thanks for reading!




And a bonus from the Prague metro!