19th – Knees and castles

Vacationing is hard work so it took a while getting out of bed which meant I only had 10 minutes for breakfast before they closed. Probably a good thing. The breakfast restaurant at the hotel has a weird layout; There are two rooms connected, in one rooms’ corner is the juice and in the middle the cereal, and in the other room around the corner is the rest. It wasn’t until a couple left their table I saw the juice table that had been hiding behind until then.

I decided to walk towards Prague castle when leaving the hotel around 1030 and on the way there I passed the city hall and its tower. I opted to go up into It and get a view of the city. I’ll admit that Prague is bigger than I had expected, unfortunately the building heat resulted in a haze ruining an otherwise potentially amazing view. And what is it with people not being able to follow simple orders? Coming outside at the top of the tower there’s a big arrow pointing you to go clockwise around the observation platform, yet I met numerous people pushing their way the wrong way around in an already limited space. Morons.

View from the city hall tower. 

Other direction, you can see St. Vitus’ Cathedral at Prague Castle in the distance to the right.

Main square with church of Our Lady before Týn

From there I went to the castle, went through security and got a ticket for the Old Palace, Golden Lane, Basilica of St. George and St. Vitus’ Cathedral. Unfortunately the cathedral was closed today due to religious stuff – fortunately the tickets are valid for two days so I’ll be returning tomorrow.

Charles bridge with the castle in the background.

Golden Lane is a small street that has gone through several iterations of being small shops or service places to being small residences. Originally the gold artisans moved here, hence the name, escaping the rule-heavy guilds in town, but later other industries started trickling in.

The front of the cathedral.

The side of the cathedral also showing the Golden Gate.

St. George's Basilica.

Inside the basilica.

The Golden Lane.

I left the castle through the rear entrance and came through a small wine yard before returning to the old town. There I walked back past the main square at town hall and continued onwards and came past the national museum before circling around and ending up at the hotel for a break.

A small local wine yard. 

A classic Czech dish is apparently pork knee and after a few attempts I found a restaurant that had a table available. I ordered a small starter and the pork knee and my waiter looked at me and said “sir, it is a big piece”. Yes, yes, sounds like a challenge, bring it on. The food was good but the knee was a bit disappointing – I had expected something special taste-wise like you get with something like pork cheeks, but it honestly could just as well have been a ham served a bit inconveniently. Was it big? Well, firstly, I had expected the bones to take up more volume than they did. Secondly, for the first time ever during these city visits I didn’t order dessert. I’ll admit; it was a fair chunk of meat in the end but it was all gone (except for the fat layer) when I was done.

After letting it all fall into place for 15-20 minutes I left and went down towards Charles bridge in an attempt to get some photos of the castle during sunset and darkness. I spent close to two hours seeing the progress – together with a lot of other people – before returning to the hotel around 2300.