Day 29 -Saturday 6 June

Vern recommended we get a 24hr metro pass today, to save legs and to experience the reported very good Czech metro. We walked about 1.5km to a metro where they sold the passes and then went over the river and up to the highest point possible by transport to the Castle area. From the metro stop, it was a gentle upward slope easy walk of around 1.4 km.

That Castle is now house of government, so you cannot go in, however, the older castle, the churches, and ‘golden lane’ (medieval street) is accessible for a fee. You can access the gardens and grounds free, just not go inside. We planned to go to the St. Vitus cathedral which is 1,100 years old and has a stained glass done by Mucha. It is a very impressive gothic building that sits at a high point of the city. Unfortunately you cannot by single entry to the sites, and have to purchase one at $450czk each which covers all of them.

Oh well, another suck it up given we did want to see the cathedral. And we were not disappointed, it is quite spectacular for its age. The cathedral took nearly 600 years to finish. It started as a simple stone rotunda built by Duke Wenceslas in the year 930. King Charles IV began building the grand Gothic structure we see today in 1344. Because of wars and a lack of funding, the building stood half-finished for hundreds of years before it was finally completed in 1929.

It is 124m long, 60m wide, with the interior arch height of 33m and the highest tower is 102.8m. If course it has royalty buried there, including the King Charles and it holds the Bohemian coronation items behind 7 locked doors.

It has lovely stained glass, including one created by Mucha.

We loved the outside almost as much as the inside, with interesting details that you would miss if you did not look carefully. The art and skill of the craftsmen never ceases to amaze and intrigue us. We love the unusual things you see too, like the zodiac signs on the decorative iron gates.

We had a cheap and cheerful lunch at a cafe up there of goulash and bread dumplings and chicken schnitzel and potato salad. It certainly lacked finesse, but was tasty and nourishing enough. Beer was cheaper than soft drinks for a bottle, so we got one can of beer and a bottle of iced tea 50 and 70 czk respectively.

Unfortunately Vern got a bit of a migraine so we took it easy an headed slowly for home via the Charles bridge, checking out the golden lane. That was a bit of a tourist trap disappointment. Just tiny rooms on a lane, recreated as alchemist, herbalist, sewing, blacksmith etc. They were likely these places originally, but it just felt plain touristy.

Our decent was via the main entry 100 steps, which have some sloped areas in between. I am certainly pleased we did not enter this end. We had a cuppa and comfort stop at the bottom and shared a nice popular cake they have here called honey cake. It has multiple thin honey coloured sponge layers with thin filling of honey cream with some sweetened condensed milk, finished would sprinkling of finely ground walnuts.

Along our wander we came across a statue-sculpture of two men urinating. It was similar to the mechanical man, in that the figures had lots of layers, however only their pelvis’ moved as they peed into the pond which is shaped like Czechoslovakia. I have no idea on the thoughts behind it, however it made me laugh out loud, so I guess that is art. Other people also stopped in their tracks to look, then laugh and in general most photographed or took video like myself. It is by the Frank Kafka museum and is called ‘Piss’, and created by David Cerny, the same artist who created the mechanical head.

Whilst we fully expected the Charles bridge to be crowded, it was a bit deflating to see how many people were on it. I do not expect that it would change much at sunset or the evening at this time of year, with the volumes of people about. As we got to the other side you could just see the people wall to wall dense in the street. There was no way to get a postcard type picture, so we resigned ourselves to record a selfie with the weir and river view and move our weary legs on towards dinner.

We could have got a metro, but it was only a 10 minute walk. We chose the Georgian again to try their soup with the special dumplings and get to dessert. It was not quite as good as the previous night, but still nice. The little Kinkali were in a light creamy broth with fresh mint and were better than the Istanbul Georgian. We got walnut dressed salad again which was excellent and Chicken with blackberry sauce. The chicken was nice, but not a patch on the amazing sour plum sauce chicken we had in Istanbul. We made it to dessert and shared a Pakhlava, which as you may guess is the Georgian equivalent of baklava.

I feel it is nothing like it – it is a firm dough with ground nuts like a short cake biscuit and has some raisins and seasoned with cardamom and or cinnamon. It was quite dry and crumbly, and eaten with a knife and fork. I felt it needed to be served with cream, anglaise or yoghurt. As it wasn’t served with anything moist, we were thankful to have our 500ml glasses of beer to wash the last bits down!

We made the last 100 metres slowly home, one foot in front of the other walking like we had drunk too much, but it was the stiffness in our legs that were begging to be horizontal. Whilst we only did 7.21km, we were on our feet most of the afternoon until 8pm so there is a lot of exercise my phone does not capture. Not complaining more so happy we can still crank out the miles and do this sort of travel.