Today started out as an adventure into the Jewish Quarters of town. We decided not to see the sights, partly because we’ve seen quite a few churches and museums, and partly because they were charging a lot. So we made our way around the backside and found a door with a small window to get a sneak peak at the old cemetery. Tombstones are piled all around and lack any sort of organizations, or so it seems… until you realize that they are like that because in some places there are people buried up to 12 deep, stacked one on top of the other.
The weather was supposed to be cloudy and possibly showers in the afternoon… lucky for us, it was hot and sunny! We’ve figured out that we’re going to have to try and find a local weather station to get forecasts… we’ve tried weather.com and BBC, but neither has been very good.
We stopped by the astronomical clock to watch it chime on the hour and see the skeletal Death character empty his hourglass and watch the procession of apostles with the rest of the tourists… then headed out to a less ventured part of town, the newer side of town (still pretty old, established in 1348). We couldn’t find anywhere that sounded appetizing for lunch, so decided to just grab something in a grocery store. We got quite a few things: a 1.5L bottle of water, bag of chips, 3 bananas, a piece of käsebrötchen (a piece of bread with melted cheese on top, very good), and 2 dessert pudding cups (with whip cream =), of course). All of that was less than US$3! We went to a nearby park to sit and enjoy our feast as we watched all the people walking through and the dogs playing.
Next, we took a long walk towards Vyšehrad, an old fortress in the southern part of the city. It was once used by the Romans and was the location of the original castle in Prague. The view from the fortress was very nice. From the north side, you could a lot of the “new town” Prague and even some parts of the wall that once went around the city. From the south side, there was a beautiful view of the Vltava River that runs through Prague.
We walked around a good portion of the fortress, along the wall, seeing most of the sights, but made sure to just stop and lay in the grass under some trees. That was very nice and relaxing. It was such a nice part of the city, yet there were very few tourists there compared to the old town part of Prague. We found out about this part of town through the guidebook I have.
After a relaxing afternoon, we had plans for eating a nice dinner at the place we ate our first day in Prague. We took the metro into town from the fortress and came out on a road where Meghan heard there was a good bakery. We stopped inside and got a chocolate croissant thing, we were planning on saving it for later that evening, but couldn’t resist taking a bite. It was very good, as we had expected.
It was still a little early to go eat and there was a world cup match on a big screen in the middle of the old town square, so we sat down and watched the last 15 minutes of the game. Greece beat Nigeria 2 to 1.
Dinner was excellent; Meghan had turkey medallions with grilled apples and a fantastic cheese sauce, with fried potatoes, I had rump steak with grilled tomatoes and pesto sauce, with fried potatoes. For dessert we had straciatella ice cream with caramel and honey, followed by two awesome cups of hot chocolate. We noticed at dinner that most of the time in the US, we’ll go out to eat and never have room for dessert, but most of the places we’ve been to here have been perfectly portioned for us.
To end the night, we went back to the hotel and watched Mexico beat France in the World Cup match (2 to 1)!
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