<BGSOUND SRC="http://www.lmhart.dotat.com/media/prague.mp3" LOOP=FALSE>Prague and the Czech Republic

Wednesday we travelled from Vienna to Prague and Thursday was spent touring the city.

We were lucky at the border crossing and were only delayed for a short time while they processed our passports. We were warned that this process could take anything up to 2 hours. We had enough time to change some Euros into local currency and took advantage of Colette paying off the loo dragon for us.

We travelled to the small Czech village of Lednice and stopped for lunch. We made ourselves a picnic lunch from some bits and pieces available at the local store – a bit difficult when you can’t read the labels.

Here, once again, the palace had been returned to its previous owner because the government couldn’t afford the upkeep. And guess who was the previous owner – the Prince of Liechtenstein. So we have yet another Liechtenstein Palace. They were in the process of renovating but you can see that this was going to be a long-term thing coz it was huge and needed a lot of time and money to restore. This place was a hunting lodge for the winter months in the past.



Back to the bus which was parked near a street market – stalls were selling all sorts of things but the most amazing for us was the ones selling BB guns – pistols, AK47’s, MAC10’s and Uzi’s – all were available – and they were realistic replicas too, not just toys. A busload of kids on a school excursion had each bought one of these guns and they were busily shooting each other with them – quite bizarre. We then continued on to Prague for our two-night stay.



Tonite we dined at our hotel, a quite reasonable smorgasbord. Leigh has fallen in love with this hotel because it has free (probably unintentionally) fast Internet access available in the room via an Ethernet plug in the wall – this is unusual according to Leigh, especially considering reception knew nothing about it, or how much it should cost. It was lightening fast, apparently.

Then it is Prague by nite with our local guide Peter. His sense of humour is so dry it is great. The Czechs are better than the German’s at 3 things: ice hockey, winning wars and drinking beer. Well, they did win an Olympic gold medal in ice hockey a few years ago and they did end up on the winning side in both world wars so those claims are credible. I guess we just have to believe Peter on the last – he should know, as it would appear he is single-handedly holding up the Czech side of the bargain!

I love the way cities look at nite – much more impressive than in daylight and some of them are mighty impressive during the day! Our tour included a walk through a monastery that now produces beer and ended with a walk across the Charles Bridge and a nightcap at a traditional Prague pub – complete with accordion player. You can get Leigh to perform a rendition of the same duet that he and Morris sang with the accordion player. HEY! HEY! HEY!



We walked back to the bus and headed back to the hotel to get some sleep before another hard tourist day tomorrow.

… The Next day …

We started the day with a city tour in daylight, again with Peter. I think the pictures tell the story better than I can here.





Time to do a little shopping so I headed straight for the crystal shop while Leigh sat down for a beer with HA, one of our tour companions. We met again near the bridge where we had left the bus and boarded a cruiser for our lunchtime cruise to get a different perspective of all these bridges and buildings. Lunch was great and we got some great pictures of the city and Charles Bridge from the river.



In the afternoon we took the Mozart Highlights Tour, again with Peter. The people of Prague loved Mozart and his music. It was here the he performed more than anywhere else. So this tour included places made famous for performances of Mozart’s work. The church was most impressive – how did they carve that much marble and make it all look the same in the columns etc. Amazing stuff.



Onto the Mozart theatre (3.5Mb) - Wow! About the only word that truly describes the look and feel of it. Exactly was I have seen in the old movies with tier upon tier of boxes for watching performances on stage. It has recently been renovated and they changed colours from red to blue – supposedly to remove yet another reminder of the communist rule of the country which is symbolised by the red colour. It still looks pretty groovy in blue is all I can say. Our theatre guide (translated by Peter) told us some funny stories and the history of the theatre – we even got to see underneath the stage where all the sets and props are stored in preparation of each night’s performance – a different production each night necessitates the ability to quickly bring in and set up new sets, something the theatre manages to do quite well with this amazing underground facility – complete with train tracks upon which the sets are guided from the huge elevator (which raises up into the middle of the square behind the theatre) via the storage area and then on under the stage.



Home again for a hotel dinner and an early nite’s sleep.

It is hard work being a tourist!