Adventures in the Czech Republic-Part 3

Prague. The Golden City, the City of a Hundred Spires, the Mother City, the most beautiful city I've ever visited. Every street is snapshot worthy, every corridor interesting to explore, every corner dotted with a church. Magical. Amazing. Romantic. It's hard to describe Prague, it's such an incredible city.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the countryside, I loved it a lot, but Prague is Prague is Prague. And even with all the touristy stuff, it doesn't get any better than Prague. Trust me.

We drove into Prague during evening rush hour, cars everywhere on the crowded streets. Chris expertly navigated us to Mala Strana (Lesser Town) and found our hotel among the winding, pedestrian-only streets. Not quite sure how he did it, but it was impressive, he's definately the navigation king.

Thanks to the lower cost of the off-season in Prague we were able to stay in a hotel situated right on the Vltava River (literally our hotel was on its banks), underneath the St. Charles bridge. If you haven't been to Prague, you should know that this is a prime location, with easy access to all different parts of the city. Here's the street of our hotel, taken from the bridge, it's the far yellow one on the left. Looking down the street from our hotel and you can see how easily we could access the bridge. The St. Charles Bridge connects Hradceny (the Royal quarter) and Mala Strana with Stare Mesto (Old Town) and Nove Mesto (New Town). It's the center of Prague 1.Prague can be pretty noisy at night, but our little square was peaceful, quiet and relaxing. Our first evening, we walked around the bridge, Stare Mesto, and just soaked up the sights. Up to this point the cities we visited shut down by 6 p.m., but here it came alive in the evening. Behind us is Prague Castle.
The hotel had upgraded our room to it's upper floor, which meant the best views of the river. When we woke up in the morning, a beautiful sunrise over the Vltava and the bridge greeted us. On the bridge looking at Prague Castle.
I think this is the only picture during our whole trip that someone took for us, and the only one that's not a close-up of our faces with a little scenery behind us:)
We walked across the bridge, under the tower, and hiked up to Hradceny to spend the day at Prague Castle, yes, it's a hike to Prague Castle. Here's the view from the top. Somewhere in Uherske Hradiste I lost the cute head wrap my friend made for me so I had to buy a cheapee souvenir shop hat, you'll see it in almost all my pics of Prague because it was so cold!
This area has been the seat of power for Bohemia since the 10th century. It's the largest working castle in the world, it is still used as a center of government, it's kind-of like the Czech version of the National Mall, only with much better architecture. Central to the castle is St. Vitus Cathedral, considered the most important church in the country, construction began on it in the 14th century, it replaced an earlier Romanesque structure.
We had to wait outside to enter the cathedral and almost froze, we used the bathroom just to get out of the wind. Our faces are so chilled that we can barely smile.

Like I said before, it was about 20 degrees colder than normal (what global warming?), so cold that even water coming off the gargoyles froze! Unfortunately the interior of the cathedral wasn't heated and was just as bitter as the outside!!

The nave, looking toward the altar...aaah, flying buttresses...I'm in Gothic heaven.During a surge in nationalism in the beginning of the 20th century the stained glass windows of the church were redone by a number of Czech artists, including one by our favorite art noveau artist, Alphons Mucha. Here's a panel from the window.

St. Vitus, like all Catholic churches, is filled with the remains of saints, kings, nobles, etc. The most famous of all is St. Vaclav, otherwise known as St. Wenseslas, that would be Good King Wenseslas, just like the song. He is the premier saint of the Czech republic, the most important one, here's his shrine inside the cathedral.

This sculpture commemorates St. Jan of Nepomuk, another significant saint, it's made from a few tons of silver, it has to be the most outrageous Baroque sculptures I've seen, and I've seen a lot of sculptures in a lot of churches.
Back of St. Vitus, this is the oldest part of the church. Did I mention I'm in art history heaven?? And that I love Gothic architecture??

We walked through an informative exhibit about Prague castle, learned about its construction, saw artifacts, medieval manuscripts, etc. We even saw St. Vaclav's helmet, considered to be the most important Czech relic after the saint's remains, just FYI:)

Inside the coronation hall--this was a main meeting place, and of course, where kings were crowned. Coats of arms decorate the ceiling, this was only a fraction of them.

The Church of St. George, typical Romanesque.
On our way out of the castle we walked through the Golden Lane, a street with tiny, medieval houses crammed next to each other. Originally it was home to archers and bowmen who defended the castle, and supposedly got its name from alchemists who later lived there and tried to turn metal into gold. Today it's just full of pricey souvenir shops. You can see I'm as tall as the door.

Brrr...are you getting cold yet by looking at us?

We stopped at a restaurant overlooking Prague for a late lunch and spent the remainder of the day walking around Hradceny, Mala Strana and Stare Mesto. Every street looked like this, street after street of wonderfully ornamental buildings.
We were surprised at how crowded it was considering it was the off season, I can't imagine how packed it must be in the summertime. This is the namesti in Stare Mesto, of course I've cut out the crowds, but know that there were thousands of people walking around.

On the bridge looking toward Stare Mesto.

Sculptures line the St. Charles bridge, they're pretty incredible. Supposedly if you touch this sculptural homage to St. Jan of Nepomuck (it shows him being pushed off the St. Charles bridge, look it up, it's an interesting story), you will return to Prague. Here's to returning sometime soon!

Our evening view of the castle. Dusk and morning were the best times to be on the bridge, absolutely romantic and magical. How can you not fall in love with a place that looks like this?

Our second day in Prague we walked to Josefov, the Jewish quarter, which is surrounded by Stare Mesto. Jews are reported to have lived here since the 10th century. Chris is in front of the Jewish synagogue, the wall of the cemetary is to the right.

The cemetary is one of the main attractions of Josefov, because there was only a little land to bury Jews, the graves had to be stacked, thus the headstones are layered next to each other. We wanted to walk through it, but you had to buy a $15 ticket which included synagogues we weren't interested in seeing. Our Lonely Planet book recommended looking at the cemetary from the 2nd floor of the Museum of Decorative Arts building next door, we did, and had a fantastic view. Oh, and we saved $30.
We spent a few hours going through the Decorative Arts Museum. Again, loved it. Room after room of miniatures, manuscripts, music, posters, jewelry, glass, clocks and more.

We walked to Nove Mesto from there, planning to go through the Municipal House and see murals by Alphons Mucha, but we changed our minds when we learned how much it would cost. Are we sounding cheap by now? There's a point on a trip where you have to decide if something is really worth the time and money when there are so many things to see and spend your money on. To see these murals would have required a 1 1/2 hour tour, and just cost too much, so we decided against it.

Instead, we walked to St. Vaclav Namesti (St. Wenseslas Square) and ate lunch. I've said it before, but street food is the best. Chris had a brat...

and I had a smageny syr, a fried cheese sandwich, I've been wanting one ever since watching an episode of Anthony Bourdain in Prague. Yes, we're still freezing.
At the end of the square is an enormous statue of St. Vaclav.

It was here that thousands of people gathered on November 17, 1989 and overthrew communism. Called the Velvet Revolution, not one person was killed, the government peacefully surrendered. Pretty incredible.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at a Mucha museum (if you've never seen his work, and you probably haven't, look up his work online, if you've been to my house I've got a few prints). His Slav Epic is undoubtedly his best work, unfortunately the castle that houses it was closed for the winter (see earlier posts as to why this makes sense), I guess that means we just have to come back!

Afterward we went to a monastery that houses a huge collection collection of medieval books and interesting artifacts like preserved sea turtles. We probably walked about 10 miles that day.

The square of our hotel at night, picturesque, huh? Again, imagine street after street like this in Prague at night. The white spots are snowflakes.

We started our third day out walking to the Church of St. Nicholas.

Delicious Baroque goodness.We hiked back to Hradceny, hoping to catch an exhibit from the National Gallery but unfortunately it was closed. Instead we got Baroqued-out at a gallery inside the Swartzenberg Palace (remember Hluboka Castle, the same family, this was their place in the city). The palace itself was nifty.

Walking down the stairs by Prague Castle.
We took the metro out to Vesehrad in the afternoon.

Vesehrad was the original settlement of Prague, and was a fairly important place in medieval times until Prague castle was fully developed. It's on a hill overlooking the Vltava River. This is the cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul, a miniature Gothic beauty.

After walking through the entry, we expected a Gothic or at least Baroque interior. We were completely and pleasantly surprised by the Art Noveau decoration, which covered every wall of the nave.
The adjoining cemetary houses a host of famous Czechs.

The view from Vesehrad, looking up the river towards Prague Castle.

Remains of the medieval wall at Vesehrad.

Old Romanesque basilica.We spent our last morning in Prague walking around the bridge and Stare Mesto. The weather was absolutely beautiful, the temperature rose 10 degrees overnight. Too bad we were leaving that day:)!!

The kitschy souvenir shops in Prague were annoying, but I guess that's what opens when a place attracts tourists. What surprised me most was the lack of any true folk crafts (except Bohemian crystal), you know I love folk crafts, but we could have bought our fill of matrosyka dolls--since when are those Czech?

Standing in front of the old clock (the orloj), we got there early enough in the morning that the crowds hadn't arrived yet. This clock was the wonder of Europe when it was made in the 15th century, the old town councilors blinded the clockmaker when it was finished, afraid that he would make another. The clockmaker got his revenge by damaging the interior of the clock and it took centuries for it to be fixed.
Easter is a big holiday in the CZ, while we were there they were setting up a large Easter market in the Stare Mesto namesti, it opened the day after we left. We were pretty sad to miss it.
Shop windows were decked out for the holiday, and trees all over the city were decorated like this one for Easter.
Sadly we had to say goodbye to Prague, and headed to Munich to stay overnight before our flight the next morning.

On the way we toured Karlstejn Castle, once the residence of Karl IV, Holy Roman Emperor. It was a long climb to the top, but well worth it!!

We couldn't take any pics inside, so here's the outside! Can you believe that Swedes once captured two of the towers? View from the ramparts overlooking the village below.

I think it goes without saying that I absolutely fell in love with Czech Republic on this trip, the people, the architecture, the history, it was wonderful. And it also goes without saying that the best part of the trip was spending it with my sweetie. I can't wait to go back again!!

Adventures in the Czech Republic-Part 2

From Jihlava we drove into the Slovacko region, in southern Moravia. The countryside was snowy and picturesque.We saw a sign for the hrad Cimburk and decided that even if it were just a ruin, it could be pretty cool to find. We're all about exploring. Now, if you remember what I wrote before, hrads are like fortress castles, usually built on a hill, and most of them are closed during the wintertime. Well there's a reason why they're closed during the winter and on this adventure we learned why. Following the signs for Cimburk took us through a small village, and then on a small road which turned to a gravel road, surrounded on both sides by trees. Pretty soon the road started going up, then before we knew it we were driving on switchbacks completely covered with snow up a small mountain. You have to know that we were in a tiny Kia which only had "summer" tires (Hertz offered us snow tires for 20 euros more per day--are you kidding me?), we thought it would be in the 50s like all the weather reports said, and anyway, we had absolutely no traction. Umm, time to call off the adventure and go down the mountain, but just then the car started sliding toward the mountain drop off, all I could do was pray that we didn't slide off the side of the mountain, and I could only think that we were going to have to pay the deductible for this darn rental car if we ruined it. At the same time, Chris expertly turned us toward a small ditch opposite the drop off and somehow managed to stop us from sliding. All he could think about was that we were going to get stuck in a ditch and have to walk the 2 miles back to the small village and convince someone to help pull us out. I think we were truly being watched over because we didn't get stuck in the ditch, nor did we go off the side of the mountain and Chris was able to back us (yes, I said back us) down the mountainside until it leveled off. Let's just say our adrenaline was running a little high by the time we turned around.

This is why most hrads are closed in the winter!

We stayed a few nights at an 18th century chateau about 15 minutes outside of the city of Uherske Hradiste. It was peaceful, quiet, surrounded by woods and we could only hear ducks and geese on the nearby frozen pond.

The Slovacko region has retained most of the folk traditions of the country, it is here that you find the most elaborate folk costumes, and keramika and Easter eggs are produced, all of which I love. We spent the next 3 days exploring the area around Uherske Hradiste, first stopping in Tupesy to find keramika (folk pottery). The museum where we thought we could buy keramika was closed, but some on the street told us we could find keramkia if we just drove around the corner. And out of someone's house was a pottery factory with the most beautiful keramika we've ever found. Too bad we were limited in our buying to whatever we could carry on board:)

The next day we went back to the museum in Tupesy and learned about the pottery traditions. Here's an example of an 18th? century kiln and fireplace in a potter's home.We spent one afternoon walking on the square in Uherske Hradiste. Chris opened this city as a missionary, so it's another special place for him.
We had debated where to spend our one Sunday in the CZ. Our church website lists the locations of branches around the world, we had looked up branches in Jihlava and Uherske Hradiste, but according to every map the addresses weren't correct, it was impossible to find a building to match the addresses listed. Strange. So we searched on for the branch building in Uherske Hradiste, but didn't have any luck. We turned on a different street and looked up. This is what we saw:

Yay! We walked in, hoping to find someone, and we did--the sister missionaries!!

They gave us information about how the branch was doing, where different members were, and told us that most of the branch was out of town on a temple trip! They took us to the shop of a member Chris knew but he wasn't there--I think he was on the temple trip, too!

For most of our days, we ate street food, like parek (hotdog stuck in a long roll with mustard-yum) or bought food from supermarkets. Some of these were huge supermarkets, the size of WalMart, I've never seen anything like them in Europe, but they were everywhere. And they had the best and cheapest bread products, most of them cost less than $1, huge loaves of crusty bread were only around $2. Did I mention they were freshly baked and there was a huge variety?
One of our favorites was bacon wrapped around a croissant-like roll. (Not sure why my hair looks pink and grey in this picture..)

Oh, and we ate lots and lots of Milka chocolate, the best chocolate. Ever.

Another day we walked around Buchlovice Chateau for a couple of hours.

Two words to describe the gardens of the chateau: absolutely amazing!! Acres and acres of trees and plants.
This tree looked like something out of Lord of the Rings.
Here I am by one of the branches of of the same tree.
Mistletoe was everywhere in the area.
We stopped at the monastery in Velehrad, quite an elaborate one.

We walked inside the cathedral and heard the organ playing, how nice, we thought, and then singing, there must be a concert, we thought, then we saw a coffin. Oops, guess we're not going to see the cathedral today!

On the hillside by Buchlovice is the Hrad Buchlov. Closed, of course.
Chris has been there before and I guess it's pretty neat, we thought we'd try to just drive up there if the roads weren't too bad and walk around. Here's what the road looked like off the highway:
No surprise that after our other experience with snowy roads we didn't hesitate to turn around and forget seeing Buchlov up close, at least on this trip!

Lace covers almost every window of almost every house in every village we drove through. They use lace for privacy during the day and it comes in hundreds of different patterns.
Immediately outside of villages and cities you often see small gardens which are tended on weekends by city/village dwellers.
I can't remember the name of this village, we explored and drove through too many.
You can see an example of Moravian folk painting on the front of this store:
Another church in another quaint village...

with more hundreds of years-old buildings...
One day we drove to a school that teaches and maintains folk traditions. We first toured the costume museum, yes, I was in heaven! A little background on Czech folk costumes: every city has it's own unique costume. Moravian costumes are heavily influenced by Hungary; Bohemian by Austria and Germany, my favorites come from Moravia because they're dripping in handmade lace and tons of embroidery and flowers. When we were folk dancers (many many years ago) we would travel to Binghampton, NY, for a festival every year where there is a large Czech population. Their costumes have been handed down from generation to generation and in order to wash them they actually collected rainwater, not trusting the chemicals in tap water to maintain the integrity of the garments, they are that valuable. These are some of the simpler Moravian costumes.
Then we toured the workshop where they make folk costumes. They let me touch the shirts to see how stiffly they are starched--they are as rough as paper, that's how the pleats stay pleated and the lace stands out. A full costume with shirt, skirt, headscarf, headress, and handkerchief costs about $3,000. Another church...

In the countryside we also saw a lot of vacation cabins.

We felt strongly that we should attend church in Jihlava and with the address given to us by the sister missionaires in hand easily found the church building on Saturday afternoon.Jihlava--more and more snow!!
The city wall surround the old part of Jihlava, this dates from the medieval era.
The communists ruined the namesti in Jihlava by building this monstrosity. Now it's home to the most capitalist of all capitalist enterprises (besides WalMart)---McDonalds! There's great irony in that!!
The best hours of our entire trip were spent with the branch in Jihlava. Chris was reunited with members he baptized 20 years ago but had lost touch with over the years, and I met people whose pictures I've seen and whose stories I've heard. Chris baptized Jaroslav when he was a teenager, Jaroslav served a mission in Ukraine, married his wife in the temple, and now serves in the branch presidency. I think this is what heaven will be like, seeing the joy that the gospel has brought to the lives of others!
When we walked into the meeting, Chris saw Sister Jakubikova and said her name. For the first few minutes all she could say was "Starsi Stapley" over and over. She was wonderful. She told me when Chris left Jihlava the train station was filled with people there to say goodbye to him. Here's Chris with Sister Jakubikova and with Brother Huda, who served as branch president before Chris left Jihlava.

The Spirit was so strong in their meeting, it was all I could do to keep it together during the service, almost to the point of being emotionally draining. Not hard to see why Chris loves the Czechs and truly loved serving in the Czech Republic.

In the afternoon we went to Kutna Hora. I'm an architectural junkie and loved the painting on the buildings. Can you guess what this is used as today?

A Mexican restaurant!

The cathedral at Kutna Hora.

Next stop: Prague.