9 May: Prague, day 1

We began the day by finding the nearest ticket outlet for one of the Prague hop-on-hop-off bus tours, and took a ride around the city: past the national museum, the opera house, the castle hill, and the old town. We got off near the furnicular that goes up to the lookout tower (shaped kind of like the Eiffel tower but a bit out of proportion), and rode that up and back for a grand total of CZK32 each. The view from the lookout was pretty spectacular.

After this – and lunch – we took the bus further around, to the castle complex – which was more of a collection of buildings rather than a ‘castle’ as we would usually think of it. The largest of the buildings is the church of St Vitus, which dominates the Prague skyline. We had a wander around inside, which had quite striking stained glass windows and mosaics. There was also an organ playing while we were there, which made for an uplifting atmosphere.

From there we went to the Old Town, and watched the astronomical clock tick over to the next hour (accompanied by a parade of the twelve apostles). At the end of the display, and the bells etc., there was a lone trumpeter at the top of the tower who played a short tune. So that was something a bit different.

Crowds waiting for the astronomical clock display

Trumpeter

Finally we walked across the Charles Bridge (Kustov Most). Like the other places, it was packed with tourists and people selling various things, including caricature sitting (although I got the feeling that if you asked to have your picture drawn, you’d end up looking a little bit like a film star, since that’s whose pictures the artists seemed to practise with).