20th
Pretty in Prague: Part II
After breakfast (which I posted pics of earlier) we went back to the bridge and took obligatory castle pics:
Version one: bemused
Version two: squeee!
Our goal for the day was to see the castle. We’ve set our standards pretty low on sightseeing this whole trip because we don’t want to stress ourselves out trying to see everything. Also I want as many excuses as possible to come back.
Anyway, you may have noticed that castle’s kind of up a hill. Being from Texas I would call it more up a mountain.
One! Hundred! And! Eighty! Eight! Stairs!
Now, I could show you a view from the top (it’s damn good), but I have a surprise later that’s better than the (numerous) pics I took from the top of the steps. So, on to the castle!
The garden was really lush and beautiful
Have I mentioned I love castles? Like, a LOT. Robin does, too, so it’s working out well. (Is there a castle in the town? Yes -> see it.) I especially like ramparts and parapets and battlements and ARROWSLITS.
I totally could have taken those people out.
We still hadn’t actually found the entrance, so we kept going around and found these guys. Nothing like a little murder to say “Welcome!”
We didn’t get the audio tour for this castle, so I never found out what that’s about. We got tickets and made our way to the interior courtyards, and were suddenly and thoroughly dumbfounded by the sheer magnitude of the cathedral.
It doesn’t even fit in the frame with the frickin’ wide-angle lens.
We walked through the interior sections, and I bought a camera pass so we could take pictures in there, but I don’t even know where to start. We loved it. It was amazing seeing stone that been sitting there for 600 years or so. Different sections of the castle had been made and re-made and un-made into various styles over the course of centuries.
I’ll take one banquet hall please thankyouverymuch
I ended up taking a lot of pictures of doorknobs and locks because they’re so complicated and impressive and I want all of them.
The place also had some pretty great ceilings
We stopped for lunch at a cafe and I had goulash in a bread bowl! And I wasn’t even at a Renaissance Festival! :D It was delicious.
Oh yes, to clarify: the cathedral is *inside* the castle. The whole place is ridiculous. It could support a whole ecosystem unto itself, and it probably did. Here is a cathedral view from the other side, and I managed to get the whole thing this time:
We went through a few more sections of castle and then ran across a blacksmith dude making really neat stuff that he would immediately put out for sale:
We had finally almost reached the other end of the castle, it was midafternoon, and our feet were yelling at us, so we started making our way back to the hostel. Not that I stopped taking pictures along the way, haha, no, that would be silly.
On the way down the hill we took a different route and there was an actual vineyard with a restaurant in it. We didn’t stop there, but it was really beautiful, especially with the view that I am still withholding. We took a different bridge across the river, which means I could get this shot of the pretty bridge from the other direction.
Flowers are all abloom here, and there were some lovely roses near the river here, so I am going to show you YET ANOTHER picture of the CASTLE
That’s the last one! We made it back to the hostel with several hours for Robin to do his homework before grabbing the subway, etc. to the airport, where we hopped a flight to Frankfurt.
Stay tuned for adventures in Germany!
