The Next Phase

Walking back from dinner, Janice noticed Christmas decorations in a shop window. She went inside to see about buying one for our tree.

While she was looking through several options to pick the one she liked best, I found this star.

The ornament is just under 3 inches across, but the star is 13 inches from tip to tip. We haven’t used our angel on the top of our tree the last couple of years but didn’t really have a good star. This one will be interesting to try to mount to the tree. There are two of these wooden designs with a space between them where there are small lights – fun things to bring home.

Also known as the Church of St. James the Greater. This is a side door.

In the closeup you can see the gold staves and the gold trumpet the angel has.

Who gets the balcony seats?

They were doing restoration work in one area of the church.

A Pieta sculpture –

I note the organ because they advertised organ concerts on Sunday at 10:00 AM.

Any time you turned around, there was another church right there.

From the top of the Old Town Hall we had noticed this tower and didn’t know anything about it. So, after we came back down we decided to try to find it.

We started through this archway off the town square.

It led to this collection of buildings around the alleyway.

Old doors –

Images on newer buildings –

An example of the red flowers in window boxes.

We could have done without the nudes, but the dog and the roster were really fun.

Even old buildings need antennas.

This is part of the exterior of St. James Basilica. The interior is its own post.

Ivy changing color for fall.

And finally the Powder Tower (which we looked up after we found it).

Note the gold angel wings in this and the following closeup.

In Prague, even a modern building can get a statue on top.

This building advertises a roof-top restaurant with a 360-degree view.

The Powder Tower from the other side.

The Municipal House –

The Palladium Shopping Center in Prague covers five floors – 170 shops and 30 restaurants.

This shows half of the pick-your-own sushi restaurant. It wasn’t quite dinner time and the other half wasn’t running.

This was an amazing reflection of the old buildings on the glass front of the modern one.

It was a long day, with a bit too much walking, but we saw interesting things.

I wasn’t sure if some of these buildings were part of the university, but there were always groups of students around.

Note the balconies on both sides.

Our intent was to arrive in time to watch the clock do its special show at the hour. We were late enough that we were towards the back of the crowd, and I was looking for something different and so I missed the show. When the guide book said that the apostles would come out, I assumed they would move along the balcony between the two clock faces – nothing happened there.

We decided to do the tourist thing and pay to ride to the top of the tower to view the city; here are some views.

These are the early arrivals for the next hour’s show.

A good view of the Prague castle.

Churches everywhere.

From this angle the figures look very three-dimentional.

St. Nicholas Cathedral.

Church of Our Lady Before Tyn

An unknown tower in the middle of the city.

Inside the Town Hall there were fancy decorations.

And a replica of the bell that was destroyed during World War II with Janice for size comparison.

These are pieces found after the fire. The bell was rung with a hammer and not by swinging the bell.

When you get close, you can see that the three-dimensional look on this building was totally a function of artistic painting.

Now I knew where to look. The apostles appear at the two small windows at the top. The one with the key is Peter.

Here are two more.

The skeleton bangs the drum in time with the sound of the bell.

It’s an amazing clock that tells the time along with the movement of the sun and the moon through the signs of the zodiac. It gathered a crowd every hour from 9 AM to 11 PM. Janice found the symbolism of the skeleton beating out the time very fun.

My track in Strava. I sent Janice a live location link so she always knew where I was.

This little plaza was the first thing I noticed.

Prague is amazingly clean. This is part of why. The fellow on the left is using a huge vacuum cleaner to sweep up things along the curb.

I don’t know if this was just a normal setup for lunch or if it was a special event, but there was a double row of tables set out in front of the restaurant in the island in the middle of the street.

I only noticed this after I had passed under it. People in front of me were looking up and taking pictures, this was why.

This is the front of St. Giles, the stated reason for the walk.

This was across the street from the church.

The museum included this courtyard next door. If Janice had been with me, we would have at least sampled their hot chocolate.

This church was closed, but these students were obviously getting a discussion from their tour guide. We wondered if it was some sort of break for schools. There were lots of youth groups around the city.

This is the Naprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures.

This looks like a Brazilian color scheme. Every building a different color.

A shop selling jeans and other denim items.

This little tiny alley had a nice stone sidewalk going through it.

And when you turned the corner it had arches.

Butterfly planes and a Five Guys Restaurant.

Next to all these ornate buildings was this very modern one with plants on the balconies.

Cherubs

And KFC which we found everywhere.

The contrast of styles next to each other.

I have no idea why the balloons around the door and on the balcony.

A small park with a statue.

And this statue of St. Joseph in front of the New Town Hall that looks like it hasn’t been new for quite a while.

Across the street the first large park I had seen.

These flowers were often planted in window boxes.

Another hanging man. This one looks more like something out of Mary Poppins.

Back by the side of the building with the butterfly planes. This time for a closeup.

A statue to Josef Jungmann a prominent Czech linguist and poet. While walking I take the pictures and then while putting the blog together look up something about why there is a statue to this person.

The street near our hotel that leads to the train station.

A closeup of the station.

One of my favorite things to do on a trip – just go for a wandering walk to see what I can find.

In my initial read through the Prague Guide Book, I noted this church as something to consider visiting. The interior decorations were done by Baroque painter Vaclav Vavfinec Reiner, who is buried in the nave before the altar of St. Vincent. There was initially a Romanesque church, founded in 1371. It became a Hussite parish church in 1420, and was given to the Dominicans following the Protestant defeat in 1620. It was far enough away that Janice didn’t want to go see it with me, so going became the object of a wandering walk. Here are the pictures from the church. It’s too small to see in these pictures, but the poster out front is announcing performances of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

Like most churches from this period, this one is way too gloppy for my taste, but the walk to get there and back was well worth my time.

This is the main conventual church of the Crusaders with the Red Star, the only original Czech order and the only order founded by a woman – St. Agnes of Bohemia. The order was founded in 1233. The church, originally Gothic style, was redone in a Baroque style between 1679 and 1685.

The organ gets a closeup -built in 1702, W. A. Mozart played on it. There are organ concerts every evening, used by this church as a way to help meet expenses.

The Church of St. Charles of Assisi is on the left side of this square. This Church of St. Salvator is the one in front in this picture.. Our first guide noted that Czechs are currently mostly not religious, but there was clearly a time when congregations could be supported right next to each other. Both in Prague and in Rome you find churches clustered together all over the place.

It was a fair amount of walking for a Sunday afternoon, but full of interesting things to see.

Unlike the ones we saw in Brazil, almost all the patterned sidewalks were made up of small square blocks, rather than more random pieces.

Roads, like this one on Charles Bridge were usually tightly arranged rectangles.

Or this one where you can see both the sidewalk and the road.

This road is next to our hotel, and while the sidewalk is very carefully done, the road itself is rough.

The pigeons are another matter. They had no fear of people and as soon as you sat down they came to check if you were going to drop anything – begging like puppies or squirrels in a park.

In Prague not only could you ride in a tour bus, but you could rent all kinds of old cars and be taken for a tour. Here are some of the ones we saw, starting with a true horseless carrage:

Behind this red car is another touring option – a golf cart.

This one was made up like a train.

This one clearly shows who the expected clientele is – an announcement in English and a price quoted in Euros.