Making up for lost time

---

AAfter the lost day that was yesterday, I joined by two girls I have met at the hostel tried to make the most of the day. We started the morning after a nice warm breakfast at the Bohemian Bagel which although passable will not satisfy anyone who has ever had a Finagle Bagel but where the coffee was much more satisfactory. Then on it went on foot to the Prague Castle (Hrad) which is quite a distance away. We enjoyed our walk, but to tell the truth it is getting a bit old because to get anywhere we always take the same route since there is no avoiding it and... it gets old. Plus everytime we have to pass by all those glass shops I just want to buy everything in them, not good. We did get a bit lost walking up the hill to the castle by forgetting to turn and wound up completely alone with a great way over Prague. That is how you know you are lost in Prague, when you have left all the tourists behind. It is amazing how many there are, I cant imagine how packed it must be here in the high season and I never want to find out.

The Castle itself is not much to speak of as there is no furniture in it and apparently the most beautiful room (which we only got to see on postcards later) was closed or locked away or otherwise unavaiable. But teh great thing about the castle was teh cathedral that belonged to it which has great stained glass windows, including one by Alphonse Muncha. (See below) However somehow we also missed the important chapel in teh church. I really was taken in by teh windows as proved by the dozens of pictures I took of them. Afterwards we had a walk on the Golden Street which is called that because supposedly the alchemists lived there. Also Kafka, but that had nothing to do with the street naming. The houses on the street have been, of course, turned into shops but they are still really cute from teh outside. They are tiny and brightly painted and it reminded me of Talinn (or what I remember of it anyway, will have to check it out).

I think it is a bit hard to find good tasting food in Prague, at least in teh tourist part, although I did find a great place near Wensel's square, but that was only thanks to locals. We did have passable lunch though.

Then we headed to the Mucha museum. Apparently he was one the greatest Czech artists and a very important contributor to the Art Nouveau movement that I have never heard of. The museum is very nice because although small it provides a very nice introduction to his work and is very well labeled in both Czech and English. It presents a secction of both his Posters which were Art Nouveau and some of his other work which was not at all. It is a shame that some of his most important work which is a series of 20 paintings called the Slav Epic and were meant to be his contirbution to his homeland and glorify the Slav Race are not available for viewing here. They are in a castle in his city of birth about 200 km away from Prague. A very nice worker at the museum did tell us that these paintings will be transfered to Prague in about 2007, which will be a great reason to come back. I especially want to see one that he painted about the freeing of the Russian Serfs which is a scene on the Red Square and he actually travelled to Moscow to take pictures to work on teh painting. It is interesting that he actually used live posers for most of his works, even ones that were not portraits. There is also a very informative video which talks about his life from beginning to end and does a very good job of giving you an overview. With that it was the end of the day for me as the other two headed to the Communist museum.

---