Part-time tourists is a good way to describe our time in Prague. We did a few tourist-y things during our thirty days there, and Melissa covered some of it, so I'm going to use a lot of pictures here instead of wording everything up.
There was an old, large cemetery about 10 minutes up the street from us. We visited it a couple times and quietly snapped some pics and chased some cats.
Lots of plots and gravestones have been overtake by nature. Nature always wins.
Nature takes its toll again, this time on an angel's face.
On top of a hill in the middle of the city, there sats a large complex of old buildings. It is called Prague Castle but it's really more of a palace and cathedral and some other buildings that are now art museums. St. Vitus' Cathedral is a pretty amazing piece of architecture that was started about 700 years ago and was just recently completed.
That is a golden window covering.
Tiny, tiny Baroque and Renaissance detail in the Gothic-style cathedral towers.
The stained glass windows are quite beautiful and very large.
This is actually not St. Vitus'. It is a church up the road from our apartment.
I like the man in the background giving this guy the side-eye like, "Why art thou on my tower?"
In the center of the main tourist vortex, there turns a very, very old clock. An astronomical clock to be precise. It was installed in the southern wall of Old Town Hall during the wonderful year of our lord 1410, though it probably was not called "Old" at that time. It was burned and broken a few times throughout its life but it is still a beautiful site to behold. Especially in the morning when there aren't many people around.
Later in the day, this entire area is impassable from the crush of people.
We heard nice classical music in the Tyn Church (in the background) including one of my faves - The Moldau.
Its half-past pisces o'clock. Those figures dance on the stroke of the hour.
We did some other random walking around and went out to a monastery to have beer that is brewed there. There is a Cubist museum and several buildings in the Old Town area that were designed by Cubists. Prague is just a great city to get lost in and see random bits of statuary and architecture.
Monastery grounds at sunset after some heavy Czech food and good beer.
The crypt keeper in a chapel on the Prague Castle grounds.
Cubist shadows on a Cubist stairway in a Cubist museum.
Even with a fair amount of time, there was much left to be explored. That's good. That means we have to go back. Maybe next time we will be able to steep ourselves more in the culture of the region and make some new friends. There are plenty of places throughout the Czech Republic that we would like to Czech out (hahaha!) as well, like the Bone Chapel in Kutna Hora. On the whole, Prague was a fantastic capitol city in which to spend a month and prepare ourselves for the final leg of our overseas trip. For the first time since we left Australia in February, we return to a country where English is the first language (though it may be hard to tell with the Scottish burr) heading to Edinburgh and the famed Fringe Festival.