Prague - Day 2
A hotel breakfast consisting of scrambled eggs and a sausage this time. That sets us up well for a big morning walk up the hill to see the sights.
The park starts across the street from us and its a steep climb to the top, taking about 25 minutes. There is a lovely rose garden and other little parks at the top, plus Petřín Tower, Prague's own the mini Eiffel Tower (63.5 meters tall).
We of course must climb the tower, despite the stair case being outside, which gets the palms sweating and us questioning our decision half way up. But we get to the top and as usual the views are worth it. We have the place to ourselves and take plenty of pictures. We can see a massive soccer stadium and ask the attendant about it. When it was built it was the biggest in the world; it can hold 250,000 people, which is obviously completely excessive and was more of a "hey, look at how awesome we are" project by the communists in charge at the time. Now its used as Sparta Prague's training ground and to hold concerts.
We descend the tower and keep walking. We go past a monastery from the 13th century and start coming back down the hill. There's also a pretty fancy looking hotel with tennis courts. The views of Prague are stunning and our pictures can't do it justice. We buy some artwork from a local artist.
We walk through Prague Castle but don't go in to any of the buildings; the lines are ridiculous and we aren't that interested about this one, to be honest.
We head up to Lenka park and see the giant (23 meters) metronome, which is exactly what it sounds like, except not actually in operation today, for some reason. It was built on the location where a giant (15.5 meter) statue of Joseph Statlin once stood but was torn down in 1962. Apparently this area is a hangout spot for the locals.
We grab a beer and spritz at a nearby place with perfect views of the city and the price is very reasonable. We get the tram back to the hotel. The trams are working well for us, they are setup perfectly around the city.
We take a load of laundry to a laundromat where a guy there helps us sort it out and we have lunch next door and play some Viking chess and just soak in the holiday vibes while we wait.
We get changed and head over the bridge to the main part of town to wander about and grab some dinner. The place we pick seems OK, but its a bit touristy. There are a lot of the same style of "authentic Czech cuisine" places in this area, and they are fine enough. The goulash was decent but Courtney's sweet orange sauce pork dish thing was horrendous and she is still having flash-backs.
We have a tour booked for tonight which is going to take us underground to a few locations and give us a bit of medieval history of Prague. They built a massive trench around Prague at one point and with all the excess dirt they gradually ended up covering over the ground floor of most of the city, meaning most buildings have an underground component dating back centuries where they have found some great artefacts showing us what life was like back then.
We don't get much out of the tour from the guide, it felt very rushed, but we did get to see some cool stuff underground and it has whetted our whistle for a more detailed history of Prague walking tour for tomorrow.
We wander around town a bit more, over to the Astronomical clock for the 9pm "show". People cheer. I'm sure we will get to know more about it tomorrow.
Courts has one of those ice cream chimney things (actually Hungarian, we hear) and its pretty great, but we can't finish it.
We soak in the views of Charles Bridge again, this time with the sun down and the lights coming on. Again, the photos do it no justice and we'll just have to commit it all to memory.
A massive day with lots of kilometres. We will sleep well tonight.
