Prague in a Day

November 19th--I'm able to go online and update tonight because I couldn't go to the opera, so I hope you enjoy this.

The day started with a determined wandering of the streets. I had looked up a couple good pitstops and factored them in, then set off.



I made my way to the river and saw the National Theater before heading across towards one of the two hills to catch a ride up to the top with the funicular. A funicular, if you don't know, is like a trolley that goes up and down a hill. It's also probably the best word ever created.

Before reaching the funicular, I went past a particularly disturbing and interesting memorial to all those who were killed or had their lives ruined during communism.


Then it was time for the funicular. It cost 20 Crowns to ride the funicular, and the funicular ride took about 2 minutes, but it was worth it. At the top there was a large area of gardens and trees, a planetarium, and a little mini Eiffel Tower. Cute.

A statue recently put up to immortalize the way women react to me.

I spent a while wandering around in the great weather (clear skies and a scorching 3 degrees Celsius) before taking the funicular back to the ground. On the way down, I got a great view of Prague.


One more note: funicular funicular funicular.


At the bottom, I headed off to The Globe, an "expat" cafe and bookstore to look for some more books. It turned out to be a really cool place, with a great selection of books. I gave them the second two His Dark Materials books for store credit and then bought Lolita, the new Dave Eggers book You Shall Know Our Velocity, and Putin's Russia, an expose by a Russian journalist.

I then crossed the entire town to get to a little highly-recommended Gyros place called Olympus. It was great food, and for the equivalent of something like 3 Euros for a meal, drink, and dessert.

The "Fred and Ginger" building

Onwards ho to past the train station to see a big equestrian statue. Apparently it's the biggest equestrian statue in the world, for what that's worth. What I didn't know was that it's on top of a huge hill. I had planned to go to a chamber strings concert at 5:00, and it was already close to 4:00. Better get climbing.

Check out the things crawling on the TV tower. The Czechs are funny.

I ran down and made my way through a construction site to stop off at the hostel and then to the concert. It was held in a small church in the Old Town, and was about an hour long. It was pretty good, although the lead violinist really dominated things and they mainly played some kind of overdone classics. Nevertheless, it was a treat in the atmosphere, and at 6:00 when it was over I went to the National Theater to try and get into Carmen, playing there.

However, it was sold out, probably unsurprisingly, so I got to head back to The Globe and relax, organize myself and my upcoming itinerary, have a couple ridiculously huge beers for absurdly cheap, and come to you fine folks in the form of this blog.

Tomorrow I'm going all the way back into Germany, past Munich to Fussen, where I'll shack up to get ready to visit Neuschwanstein castle on Wednesday.

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