The stars finally aligned for us yesterday: good health, GREAT weather (32 in the shade), and lots of energy. We had registered for a 6-hour walking tour the night before, and got up early Tuesday morning to get started. The tour was lead by a local guy with excellent English whose name I sadly can’t pronounce/spell. There was a group of people from Bangkok, another group from New York, and us, totaling 17 people… things got kind of crazy at times with such a large group, but we all made the best of it.

The tour started in the Old Town square where we had done a bit of walking before, but didn’t really know what we were looking at. Our guide was pretty nervous (it was only his third tour, and never with so many people) but with only a few peeks at his cue cards gave us a very detailed early history of the settlements that became Prague. The Old Town Square has 2 churches, a gorgeous astronomical clock, a huge monument, and an excellent mix of Gothic / Baroque / Renaissance architecture. Many of the churches had burned down a number of times, so what was originally built in one style was rebuilt many times over in different styles. Pretty interesting stuff! He even pointed out where buildings were started in one style, but finished in a different one. Aside from losing some buildings to fire the Old Town is very well preserved – it was largely undamaged during WW2. One other cool thing (which I’m sure is quite common) is that “street level” is 10-20 feet higher now than when the buildings were first built. Before the river was dammed flooding was quite common, so the entire Old Town was raised up. You can still see the old levels below the street in some places too… very cool.

After our Old Town tour we had a great lunch (more goulash & beer!), then moved through the city to the Charles Bridge. This is the oldest and most famous bridge in Prague, and very impressive to see. Unfortunately half of it was under repair, but still cool. We then got on a boat for our river tour, and after sitting there for 40 minutes finally pushed off the dock. Man, was our guide ever fuming at that! Apparently the boat was booked in advance by our tour company, but the boat company decided they didn’t want to leave until 4 more people got on the boat. So much for sticking to our schedule! The tour itself was pretty cool though – I had been itching to get on some water for the last few days. Some great shots of the city from the water too, so it was definitely worth it.

After our boat tour we walked across the Charles Bridge to the Mala Strana (Little Quarter) and up into the Prague Castle grounds. The castle itself is actually a number of buildings that were joined together over the centuries, including the beautiful St. Vitus Cathedral. Unfortunately we were short for time, so we kind of rushed through this part. Still, good photos and a great historical overview from our guide, so again definitely worth our while. By this time our Bangkok group had to rush to the airport (they were only in town for a few hours – crazy!), so we were down to 8 people. After the Castle we walked back to the Old Town across a different bridge, and into the Jewish Quarter (Josefov). At that point we were well past our 4:00 finish time, so I think we got the Coles Notes version of the tour. Two things of note: the oldest Synagogue in all of Central Europe is there, plus a Jewish cemetery from the 15th century. When the cemetery was first created it was illegal for Jews to bury their dead outside their neighborhood, so when they ran out of space a layer of earth was added ON TOP of the existing graves, and more were buried. This continued for 300+ years, so that now while there are only 12000 headstones present, there are an estimated 25000 people buried in around 12 different layers of earth. Wow!

Funniest part of the tour: one of the young girls from New York asking if there would be a lot of walking on the tour. WHAT?? Our guide just kind of looked at her for a bit, completely at a loss for words. Needless to say their 7+ hours of walking on tiny flip flops didn’t work out too well, and that combined with the slow pace of the folks from Bangkok stretched the tour out significantly. Still, we were both very glad to be able to get the tour booked and finished, and take probably our best photos of the trip.

Off to the Bone Ossuary at Kutna Hora today. Will write more later