While I didn't take any pictures from the top (Rob took several), here is a picture of the tower, which is next to the beautiful Art Nouveau Municipal House, a venue for arts performances:
From here we walk down the always-busy, Celetna Street towards the Old Town Square, stoppping to admire a cubist style building that our guidebook had pointed out, and then to find the entrance for the church that overlooks the square, the Church of Our Lady before Tyn. This church is unusual in that the entire front of the church is blocked by the construction of other buildings, so it actually, in fact, has no facade. We ended up walking an entire circle around the church before we could find the entrance, which is at the end of a passage between two of those buildings attached where the facade should be. Inside, there is the typical (for Prague) Baroque decoration. For some reason, photos are not allowed.
Back to the square, our plan is to climb another tower, the Old Town Hall Tower. This one actually has a modern elevator, so our legs get a break. Here is a view from the top of this Tower towards the Old Town Square below and the imposing Gothic church is Our Lady of Tyn (you can see then buildings in front of the church):
You can see that the day has turned a little overcast. There is a threat of rain, too bad we didn't bring our umbrellas. This tower is not too crowded, although the same cannot be said of the square. Wow, is this pace packed on a Saturday! Tons of tour operators and roving bands of tours. Apparently guided tours are a big deal here. I am guessing that a lot of Europeans like to come to Prague just for the weekend. As a matter of fact, as soon as we descend from the tower, I hear an Italian man on his cellphone using the words "weekend" and "Prague" in the same sentence. Who knew "weekend" was a word in Italian?
At the bottom of the tower is another can't-miss sight, the astronomical clock, which puts on show at the top of each hour. A skeleton begins ringing a bell then two windows open and a whole parade of saints take turns making appearances in the windows. It is a nice show, a little shorter than I had anticpated, but still ... when in Prague ... There is yet another church on the Old Town Square. It is the Church of St. Nicholas Church, which is part of the Czech Hussite church (followers of the renaissance era Czech protestant leader Jan Hus). It is under renovation inside and out, but it is very pleasant inside. There are some Baroque adornments, but mostly (being Protestant rather than Catholic) it is a calm white space. Certainly no statues of saints and not a cherub in sight. The interior does feature a lovely chandelier.
Heading north from the square is a street called Parizska. This is a beautiful, tree lined street with one gorgious building after another. The street level shops feature all of the top designers, Prada, etc. This is now technically the Jewish Quarter part of Prague, also called Josefov. However, other than a few surviving synagogues and a cemetery, there is nothing Jewish in this area -- we will doing that sightseeing tomorrow, as all Jewish Museum sights are closed today (Saturday is the Sabbath, after all). Parizska Street goes all the way north to the river where we cross to the other side on the Cechuv Bridge. We walk along the side of the river with the idea of exploring some of the sites in Mala Strana (lesser town) that we have not yet seen. Yesterday, we passed through Mala Strana on the way to the castle, but did not really do any exploring. However, by the time we got to the next bridge over the river, we realize it is time for lunch, so we cross back over the river towards the Jewish Quarter. On the river is a floating restaurant called Marina Grossetto that looks like a nice place, so we go in. It is an Italian restaurant. I have a pizza Margharita, and Rob has a salad with grilled shrimp. While we are eating, though, a few drops of rain threaten. So our first order of business is to find a shop with cheap umbrellas, which we do only a few blocks away.
We crossed back over ther river to the Mala Strana and head to our first destination, the Valstejnska (Waldstein Palace) Zahrada (Garden). The Palace itself is the home to the Czech Senate, but gardens are open to the public. They are formal gardens with one unique feature, called a grotto. It is a huge wall made to look like stalagmites and stalagtites that has faces and animal images hidden in it. The following photos show the wall and a face of a lion that I found:
There are also peacocks in the garden who put on both a visual and aural show. They can be loud -- I witnessed a baby crying from the sound of the birds's squawks.
Departing the gardens, we walk to the Lesser Quarter Square, which features the Czech parliament building, but is dominated by the Church of St. Nicholas and its tower. We first climb the tower and then tour the church. This church is also Baroque, but seems lighter. It has pastel colored marble columns that are lovely, but are actually fake, the marbling effect painted on. Another feature that is unusual is the statuary. There are huge, white statues of saints everywhere -- talk about larger than life!
Here is the view from the top of the tower, back towards the old town across the river. The tower in view is one of the Charles Bridge towers (look at theb throngs of people on the Charles Bridge and the Karlova Way):
We then walked up the street called Nerodova ulice. This was the last leg of old royal processions up to the castle and features beautiful palaces. We stopped to admire two: the current Romanian embassy and the current Italian embassy. Then we stumbled our way to the Vrtbovska zahrada (Vrtba Garden). I say stumble upon, because this garden is hidden behind a partially closed door on a busy street and barely has a sign to identify it. That said, I did spot the sign and we entered. The garden dates back to the 1700's, but fell into ruin and was only recently rebuilt in recent years by a private company. It can now be rented for weddings or other events. It is a very formal space with lots of manicured boxwoods and climbs up three levels. Very nice space that we enjoyed in on and offf drizzle (thank goodness we bought those umbrellas!).
Our final sight to see today is near a bridge to Kampa Island where an homage to John Lennon has been created by young people via graffitti on a wall. Lots of young people stop here to be photographed, so I take a picture, too!
With sightseeing done, we do a little shopping. We buy a beautiful glass bird in a shop near the restaurant, Certovka (where we had eaten Thursday night), then buy a charming pen and ink colored small drawing from Zuzana on the Charles Bridge. Finally we buy an art glass piece in the Old Town from a store called Blue. Prague and the Czech Republic are well known for the glass and crystal objects produced here.
It is the end of another long day of walking, and we are too tired to venture out to find a place to eat dinner, so we elect to eat at the Hilton in the restaurant called Zinc. Rob has a delicious dish with cod and mine is with sea bass. Very high quality food here I must say. Our wine is a white wine from Moravia that is a varietal called Palava -- never heard of it. It is a dry wine with a lot of floral qualities. The closest that I can recall to this wine is an Italian varietal called Tokai.
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