Up as early as we could again - which wasn't, I fear, so very early. The weather promised to be another gloriously hot day, and once more we were grateful for the air conditioning in our hotel (air conditioning tends to be rare in mid and north Europe).

Today we were setting out for the Charles Bridge - one of the most famous sights in Prague. Even though it was only nine o'clock, the day was already hot - and I knew we would just bake on the Bridge.

We caught the metro again and got off at Staromestská, across the river from Malostranská, where we caught it yesterday., and made our way towards the bridge. It was still so hot ... and as cars were allowed in this part of the old town, the air smelt of exhaust fumes. It was cleaner by the time we got to the bridge though, a five minute walk later., going past the Clementium - a huge Jesuit College.

Looking back towards the Clementium from the other side of the river	The Clementium, and the statue of Charles

 

They spent 200 years building it - only for the Jesuits to be expelled soon afterwards and the College given to the University of Prague. It now houses the National Library.

Images of the Bridge

On this side of the bridge, there is a wonderful medieval tower, and a small square with a statue of King Charles - with a balustrade that offers a spectacular view of the Castle opposite. The bridge itself is relatively narrow, with great thick pallistrades (I think). It is pedestrian only - and always crowded; the day before, looking down from the castle, it had seemed to be heaving with people.

The Charles Bridge was one of the areas people were worried about flooding last year. Foruntately, it just stayed above the level of water and was undamaged.

The Bridge in the Floods

The city as a whole was very badly affected. Most people have heard, I think, about the zoo animals that had to be destroyed. Last year, I visited about seven weeks after the floods - and large chunks of the city (on the north bank) were still without electricity, and the metro was still largely dysfunctional in the centre. Many of the stations were completely flooded - the way that they have restored them by now it little short of miraculous.

The photograph above shows a part of the Old City. The apparently fragile barrier is miraculously keeping the river water away from the evacuated Old City. At the time the water level culminated, the water stood 5-10 cm (2 - 4 inches) below the top of the barriers. If the water had passed the barriers it would have been the end of the Old Town.

The Lesser Town was badly flooded from the river. The Old Town escaped the overflow of the river (just) but low lying areas, such as the Jewish ghetto, were affected by water seeping up from underground.

I've picked up some pictures from around the web to give you an idea of what it was like ...

Some pictures of the floods

Anyway, we crossed the Bridge in the midst of the crowds, and past all the little stalls offering to create a caricature of your face or sell you cheap souvenirs. There is a romantic ideal of the bridge ...

Romantic images of the Bridge - without people!

But really, it is very popular!

The key features are the thirty statues set up along the bridge on either side. These portray different Saints, although there is also a Crucifixion and a Pieta, both done in the slightly austere Northern Europe style that is somehow designed to appeal to spiritual aspirations. The Italian crucifixions tend to be so immediate and vivid that one reels away, horrified, from the savage immediacy of it all - especially when you come on a group together, collected in a gallery.

The Bridge with its statues

Here, however, by and large the saints are portrayed in characteristic attitudes. Many are particular Czech favourites who I was not familiar with at all, like St Catejan, St Adalbert, St Luitgard and St Procop. On the other hand, all I know of St Vitus is he has a medieval illness called after him (St Vitus Dance), and has a rather fine cathedral.

The central statue is that of St John Nepomuck (he of the rather grandiose tomb in the cathedral (seen yesterday). Appropriate - he is one of the patron saints of the city, and did meet his end when he was thrown from the bridge in 1393 on the orders of Wenceslas IV (decidedly not Good King Wenceslas). John Nepomuck was Vicar General at the time, and I gather the whole thing had shades of our Thomas a Becket and Henry II row. It is said that if you touch the bronze plaque at the base of St John's statue, you will return to Prague. When I told Greg this - he shot across and touched it ... mind you, I beat him to it.

We crossed the rest of the bridge and found a café to recover (we really did do a lot of sitting and watching the world go by to recover, but at temperatures of 90ºF/36ºC, breaks and hydration was a very good idea. Then we carried on through a slightly less impressive gate tower (but still jolly fine) and up the street into the Lesser Town.

The road from the Bridge to the Lesser Town Square	Part of Lesser Town Square

Here we saw the church of St Nicholas that dominates the Lesser Town Square ...

St Nicholas	Behind St Nicholas, walking down to the Lesser Town Square

before making our way back past some Palaces such as the Waldenstein to Malostranská, where we caught the Metro home to rest up before the boat trip we had booked.

Actually, the boat trip was a little disappointing. To start with, it was raining when we boarded (although it cleared up - and the rest of the day was as fine as before). We had nice coffee and cakes in the restaurant (part of the trip), but to be honest, our guide didn't seem a lot more informative than the average person in the street would be. The boat sailed up the river, but couldn't go much farther than the Charles Bridge (as there was a weir). Then it turned round very, very slowly ... and sailed back down the river. This area was less interesting, but again we didn't go very far before turning slowly once more and sailing back again.

It was nice to be on the water and see a different perspective, but once we disembarked and started to make our way back through the Jewish quarter, Greg and I rebelled. We declared our intention of exploring the ghetto in a little more depth - much to the guide's irritation, for she wanted us to go with her to the Old Town Square. We said our goodbyes nicely but firmly and headed for the Synagogues.

The Old New Synagogue	The Jewish Town Hall and a gate to the Jewish cemetry

The ghetto is fascinating. Originally, the Jewish quarter was a key part of the city. There were various pogroms, periods when the Jews were expelled and also ongoing anti-Semitism, of the kind that led to the legend of the Golem, the monstrous clay figure created by a pious Prague rabbi to protect the Jewish population. When Hitler took over Czechoslovakia, he determined to have a museum here in Prague which would display all the artefacts of a lost race, the Jewish people, who he intended to destroy. Therefore, artefacts belonging to Jews from all over Bohemia were collected and sent to Prague and are now displayed in a series of small museums based on the synagogues. It was too late to get a ticket and visit them all, and, sadly, the Pinkas Synagogue, the one we really wanted to see, was still be restored after flood damage. So we wandered around the quarter a little, and ended up by visiting the Franz Kafka café for a drink.

Franz Kafka cafe

Then - it was late afternoon by now - we made our way to the Old Town Square.

Parked by the entrance to the Square was an old-fashioned open white sports car. I had seen them on my trip last autumn, and thought then they looked a rather fun way to see the city. There were pony carriages too - and Greg and I have done those before, including a nice little trip around Innsbruck a couple of years ago. Ut the sportscar looked stylish - and fun. So - we climbed aboard.

And it was terrific! The driver took us past many of the areas we had seen before on foot - such as the Jewish Ghetto and the Lesser Quarter - but he also took us much further out, so that we saw churches like St Mary in Chains (because the doors were chained shut every night) and the Church of Our Lady of Victory which houses the Baby of Prague (a special veneration of a nine inch wax doll that is said to possess miraculous powers and is famous all over the world). Then he took us along the back streets of the Old Town - it was beautiful and fascinating for we could never have walked so far. All the while he was calling out descriptions and stories - and Greg was quite enjoying the awed looks we were getting from humble foot tourists. We were his last passengers of the day - he was off to watch the football afterwards, he told us (and yes, that's what the rest of the world calls football, not the bizarre American take on the game). So he gave us a few extra circuits, and we gave him an extra large tip so he could have a beer.

Then he left us in the Old Town Square and we wandered across to an open restaurant to have a meal.

We had a lovely, long, leisurely dinner. We started with soup; Greg had potato soup which was rich and thick, flavoured with herbs and vegetables (not a pale soup at all). I had garlic soup - which I had heard recommended, and it was really, really delicious. It tasted very potent - similar to the taste the liquor you get with garlic prawns (minus the shellfish taste). I could foresee that toothbrushing was going to need to be vigorous!

Then I moved on to another traditional Bohemian dish of roast pork in an absolutely gorgeous sauce with dumplings. We ate slowly, watching the sky darken, and braziers lit to illuminate the spires of the Teyn Church.

The Teyn Church as evening falls.
Even more impressive when the spires are lit!

The restaurant was busy and lively - but no-one rushed or hurried us. After the main course, we relaxed over coffee and then, because we were replete and lazy and well-content, we had a liqueur, letting the waiter recommend a local plum liqueur. It was served ice cold, and tasted potent but unexceptional in the mouth. Then ... you swallowed and
o
  o
    o
      o
        o
        o
      o
    o
  h
h
h

You could feel it descending slowly down your throat until it landed with a little internal splash in the stomach. It was gorgeous.

After that, we rose and made our way quietly home, via Wenceslas Square and the metro.