Prague, Czech Republic- Home of the Astronomical Clock!

---

Hi Blog Readers, we have made it to the capitol of the Czech Republic, Prague. We took the 9 am train from Salzburg to Vienna (Wien) and then hopped a Czech train to Prague. We thought we were going to have to change train stations in Vienna (by using the metro) but we lucked out and train #61 our train, went right to Wien Mielding where we needed to catch the train to Prague...Yea! Arrived at about 5pm. Dragan, a young man from Slovenia was at the station to meet us and took us straight to our apartment in "Little City", a perfect location. Walking distance to everything. We are right across the street from St. Nicholas church and just a couple of blocks from an ATM, Starbucks, great Czech restaurants, the "castle" and Old Town. with it's Astronomical Clock.

We are no longer using Euros as the Czech's have joined the European Union but have not converted to Euros yet. So an ice cream cone costs 30 crowns or about $1.50. We have some bills of 2000 denomination on them which is about 100 dollars. Not too difficult to figure out... about 20 to one.

As in Austria, there are a lot of classical music venues. Tonight we went to a concert in St. Nicholas Church featuring a violinist, and opera soprano and an organist. They played music from Mozart, Shubert, Bach, Frescobaldi, Handel, Dvorak and Franck. We could not see the singer or the musicians as they were way up in the roof of the church. There were about 80 people in the audience in the pews and just listened to this beautiful music while looking at the very "gilded" baroque church was wonderful.


This morning we climbed the hill (of course) to the castle grounds. A huge area with St. Georges Church, a magnificent cathedral (St. Vitus) and the seat of government for the Czech Republic. We "almost" saw the changing of the guards through the crowd. At least we saw the guards walking away

We also saw the astronomical clock in the Old Town Square. It keeps several versions of time. The outer ring shows the hour, (bohemian time and modern time) It also shows sunrise and sunset, and orbits of the sun and moon. It also shows the signs of the zodiac, a ring of saints names and scenes from

Astronomical Clock

---

Originally built 500 years ago and reconstructed.

the seasons of a rural peasants life. If that isn't enough, at the top of the hour....first death tips his hourglass and pulls the cord ringing a bell, then the windows on top open and the 12 apostles parade by, next the rooster crows and finally the hour is rung! All this takes just maybe 30 seconds so you have to be watching closely! ;-) Pretty amazing.

This is a beautiful city and we're certainly glad that we stopped. We'll be here till Tuesday when we head for the airport and take Czech Airlines to Copenhagen, Denmark. If you have any questions just send them along.

---

« Previous Entry Next Entry »

There are more photos below

Photos: 4
Displayed: 4

Advertisement