Prague: The rest of the story.

I suppose I owe you the rest of the story. Day two in Prague started at a much more reasonable hour. After enjoying a wonderful continental breakfast, we broke into a couple of groups and headed out from the hostel around 9:30am. I "led" the group that wanted to go to the castle (since I only had a glimpse the first day). Some of the group hadn't seen the John Lennon wall on day 1, so we stopped by there first and stumbled upon a beautiful little church nearby that we looked into briefly. Then it was off to the castle.

The tram let us off near the gorgeous Royal Gardens, so we started by touring those. In addition to boasting great views of the main part of the castle, we saw the Summer Palace, Game House, Orangery (greenhouse), and many fountains. The route we initially took led us away from one of the main fountains, so we circled back around - and it is a good thing we did, because we happened to pass a falconry exhibit. Not only could you view beautiful birds like peregrine falcons, a golden eagle, and several owls, you could even pay to hold one of the birds (hence my new facebook profile picture). I held the golden eagle, who is named Alexandra. It was a tremendous experience to hold such a powerful and magnificent bird. We preceded to the main castle to see what other wonders lie in store. We saw most of the castle, and went into the back of the nave of the St. Vitus Cathedral, but didn't have a ticket to go all the way around the church. Since we had plans to meet the rest of the group at 1 for lunch, our visit to the castle was cut short.

Lunch was near the Jewish Quarter, so afterwards we decided to explore the synagogues. All of the major buildings in the Jewish Quarter have been turned into a single museum, so we bought a pass that let us tour four synagogues, the cemetery, and the Ceremonial Hall. I was a bit skeptical at first, but the Old Jewish Cemetery was actually really cool to see, because of its history: The cemetery was expanded several times, but eventually not even that was enough, so they put another layer of dirt over the already existing graves. This was done 2-3 times, so the cemetery actually has layers of graves. Each time they put down a new layer though, they brought up the tombstones from the previous layer(s), so gravestones are basically stacked on top of each other. It is estimated there are over 12,000 gravestones in the cemetery, with the earliest dating back to the 1400s and all dating before 1800.

Surprisingly, the cemetery was not the most somber of the places we visited. The Pinkas Synagogue has been turned into a Holocaust memorial. The names of the 80,000 Bohemian and Moravian Jews that were murdered by the Nazis are written on the walls of the synagogue. In case that wasn't enough to put a damper on your mood, upstairs are pictures drawn by Jewish children at Terezin, a transit camp were children waited before they were sent east to extermination camps. Like I said above, this experience was very somber, but especially a couple days before we remembered the terrorist attacks of 9/11, it was a good reminder to never forget the atrocities of the past and to never let them happen again. Though we had to take some time to process all that, our tour of the Jewish Quarter ended on a high note with the Spanish Synagogue - which was absolutely breath-taking. I am not going to even try to describe it, because anything I could say would fall so far short. Near the entrance, I saw a poster stating that the Spanish Synagogue is the most beautiful synagogue in Europe, and I do not doubt that for an instant.

Next it was time for another concert at the St. Nicholas Church. This time a different BSMer accompanied me. This concert was an organ and voice recital, and it was really good (added bonus, I wasn't nodding off this time). You really can't go wrong with a well executed rendition of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Then we met up with the group again for dinner at a hip restaurant in a cellar. Again, the food was great - we did very well food-wise while in Prague (thanks to the use of a couple of guidebooks).

After dinner we went down to the river to see the city lit up. We also saw a few more sights (the National Museum and Prague State Opera House chief among them). Since most of the group was still recovering from the lack of sleep on the trip up to Prague, we called it another early night (by college student standards).

Then all we had left was Saturday morning. After another wonderful breakfast at the hostel, we checked out, left our bags in the luggage room, and headed out to make the most of our last little bit of time in Prague. Two other students and I wanted to see inside the castle buildings, so we headed there. We started by touring through all of the St. Vitus Cathedral, which was stunning and full of wonderfully crafted statues, shrines, sepulchers, and you-name-it-they-probably-had-two-of-it Catholic religious items. Unfortunately, my camera decided to run out of battery about a quarter of the way through the cathedral (this made me very upset - though I couldn't stay that way because I was surrounded by such beautiful artifacts and architecture). Next up was the Old Royal Palace. Not quite as impressive as the cathedral, but I could probably get used to living there. It also offered great views of the city. After the Palace was St. George's Basilica, which dates back to the 10th century. Being 500 years older than the cathedral, this was much more austere, but it was still really inspiring to stand in a building that has seen the turning of two millennia.

Next, we decided to get our cardio for the day, so we climbed the bell tower of the cathedral. This involved climbing 287 steps to ascend 96.65m (that's basically a football field put vertically). Fortunately, we received a little encouragement on the way. Outside in the courtyard, the band of the Palace Guard and Prague Police Department was giving a concert, and when we were about halfway up, they started playing the James Bond theme. There is something undeniably awesome about climbing a stone spiral staircase to James Bond music. We had a good laugh about it. Accompaniment aside, the view justified the climb. The tower boasts 360 degree, unobstructed views of Prague (and the surrounding area, because, well, you can see pretty far from all the way up there). Once we (reluctantly) climbed back down, we finished our tour by visiting a lane of houses and the dungeons. We met up with others for lunch, picked up our baggage from the hostel, and get on the train back to Budapest.

My trip to Prague was amazing! Things went very smoothly (generally), and it was a very successful trip (especially considering that this was the first time any of us going had organized something like this). The only (small) complaint I have is the weather. It was drizzling on and off the first two days we were there, but at least it was a lot cooler than Budapest. So, all-in-all a really minor complaint. However, taking such an awesome trip right before classes started means I was not quite mentally prepared for them - oops! Well, time to get back to homework.