Prague Diary Day 3

Day 3 saw us visiting Old Town, aka Stare Mesto. We took the tram to Powder Tower then commenced the stroll down Celetna Street towards the Old Town Square where the famous Astronomical Clock can be found. It also marked the first opportunity to shop as the walk took us thru the shopping area. What fascinated me was the numerous plaques on the buildings, some of which are captured in the Flickr set. Unfortunately on this day I only had my general purpose lens with me so I couldn't really zoom in to capture some of the more interesting plaques mounted high up, but of course since this area wasn't far from our accommodation, I did make another trip to this area a day or two later with the long lens.

The stroll thru Old Town eventually leads towards the Vlatva river and hence Charles Bridge where I managed to capture a number of interesting statues on the Bridge, including the 17th Century Crucifixion and St John Nepomuk, a statue that brings luck to those who touch it...

Hope you're enjoying the pictures...

Prague Diary Day 2

On the second day we woke up quite early only to remember that the sun shines really brightly from about 5:30am!! On today's schedule we were to visit "Prazsky Hrad A Hradcany" aka "Prague Castle and Hradcany" in the northwestern corner of the city. After a leisurely breakfast we made our way down to the tram stop for the ride to the castle area. I must acknowledge that the average Czech is very helpful towards tourists... One spotted Mei Lan with the guide book and guessing, based on our tram direction, where we were headed, proceeded to give us advice on where to get off the tram and what to look for in order not to get lost.

We arrived early for the opening of the gardens so we decided to stroll into the Courtyard area of the castle first to take a look. While the weather there was very pleasant throughout the trip, it did get a little uncomfortable when the wind started to blow...

We enjoyed strolling through the gardens and then through the castle grounds. After leaving the castle we strolled down the road towards the Loreto, a beautiful building which unfortunately we could only take pictures of from the outside.

On the way back to town we stopped off to take pictures of Charles Bridge with the Castle and the distinctive spires of St. Vitus Cathedral in the background.

Prague Diary Day 1

Finally managed to pick and edit sufficient photos to start the diary, so here goes...

In the previous post I put up a picture of where we were staying... We did arrive fairly early in the day (around noonish I think) and since it only gets dark around 9pm my tour coordinator made plans to go for a short excursion to Vysehrad Park, just south of the town area to get a 'feel' of the place and also to check out the transportation system which we were looking to make use of a fair bit.

Fortunately the metro experience wasn't as stressful as the one's we had in Rome and we reached our destination without too much difficulty... Once out of the train it was a slightly different story as it took us quite a while to get used to the directions in the guide book to get to the gardens.

Overall I thought it was a nice experience and the views were a good prelude of what was to come during the following days. I also managed to catch a glimpse of Charles Bridge and Prague Castle from one of the vantage points along the walk.

Finished off the evening with a traditional meal in a Czech Beer Hall.... Cannot really say much for the food, which we both found a little too salty for our taste but the beer... Excellent!

Stay tuned for the next installment. As usual, there are more pictures on my Flickr site which you can reach via the link embedded in the title...

The Prague Holiday Story Begins...

We're finally back from the trip. Smooth voyage home. The pictures are still not ready for full posting so here's just a sneak preview.... It starts with the accomodation. I was only shown pictures of the inside of the apartment but when we arrived I was pleasantly surprised to see that right below the apartment was a HUGE camera shop and behind the apartment was the Langhans Galerie.... given that I went on this trip with a major objective of bringing back some nice photographs, the surprise really set the tone. Not to say that the location didn't pose problems... it was kind of hard to get out of the shop the first few times as its really big and stocked full of really neat stuff...

More to come...