Eastern Europe - Days 33 and 34 - Prague

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Yesterday was a complete and utter right off. I was so tired after all the exercise of the day before and the drinking session that night, that i was basically a complete and utter zombie. I was so tired that it was actually too much effort to eat food! Luckily the day was a travel day between Cesky Krumlov and Prague so it was totally acceptable to sit there and look like a complete zombie not saying anything to anyone.

After a good nights sleep last night (well the usual 5 1/2 hours anyway - for some reason I do not seem to be able to sleep past 5:30am at the moment. My body just pings awake.) I was in much better form today. Much much better form. So much so that Susan and I were up and out the door at 8am this morning on our way to undertake Susan and Chelle wacky tour of Prague. It was a bit of an unintentional tour, Susan had been planning to go straight to the castle, however somehow we ended up taking our laundy into the laundromat together and from there we headed off to the town square to take some pictures without the millions of tourists. After getting a photo of the smallest (thinest) hotel in Prague, and what used to be the thinest hotel in the world, we headed over an empty Charles Bridge - Bliss. We stopped at the monument of St John of Nepomuk to make a wish. Now St John was once a priest and when he refused to tell King Wenceslas what his Queen had said in confession the King had the priest tortued and then thrown to his death from the bridge (1393). Apparently the place on the bridge where the statue actually is, and where all the tourists rub the parts of the statue for good luck, actually is not the place where he died. Instead the proper place to touch the memorial for luck and to make your wish is about 20m further away from the castle. So I made the same wish that I have been making all over the world on this trip, here's hoping that it comes true. To try and give it a bit of extra help I spun in a circle on the spot and hopped on my left leg.

After making our wishes we headed off to find the narrowest street in the world. It is so narrow that only pedestrians can use it, and even then there are traffic lights as you can't pass on it. We then decided to wander off and attempt to find the Lennon Wall. I meet up with my previous tour leader Andy last night and she told me about the Lennon Wall. Unfortunately at the start I thought she said Lenin Wall so for about 5 minutes we were each having a slightly different conversation. However once we cleared up the misunderstanding and I understood that we were talking about John Lennon Andy told me the story behind it. According to Andy when John Lennon was assasinated people started writing up some of his quotes on this wall as graffit during the soviet times. Of course the soviets didn't like it at all and used to paint over it each day, and then each night new quotes would be written up. Apparently the wall is actually the back wall of one of the consulates and the story goes that when communisim fell the ambassdor of that embassy asked for it not to be painted over any longer, and therefore we now have a Lennon Wall of Prague.

After visiting The Wall we then headed off down the riverfront to try and get to the Hunger Wall. Along the way we passed the freakiest statue that I think I have ever seen (check out the photos). The Hunger Wall is in Petrin Park, which is in a part of Prague that I didn't visit last time I was here. So it was great to go there today. We walked up to the top of the park but didn't manage to get a good shot of the Hunger Wall, sorry. We also don't yet know the history behind the Hunger Wall as my lonely planet bible has let us down and doesn't mention it. But I'll google it when I get the chance. Wandering up to the top of the hill took a while and made us very very warm. When we got to the top we discovered that there was a mirror labyrinth and replica of the Eiffel Tower there. So of course we had to go into those. The Petrin Tower as it is called has 299 steps so when we got to the top of it we got a fantastic view of Prague. Unfortunately the labyrinth really wasn't very good at all.

And we did all of this before 11am in the morning. So after a quick snack Susan and I split up for the rest of the day. Susan to visit Prague Castle, and me to wander about Prague aimlessly. I loved doing this as I still had one more wacky monument that I wanted to find. Andy had told me last night about a massive statue of Charles the 4th riding an upside down horse, suspended from the ceiling in a shopping centre on Wenceslas Square. So I tootled off to find that. After photographing the statue I then spent the next 3 hours just wandering around. In particular I managed to find a place to get a manicure. So my fingernails look lovely again now. However my toes are still a mess as noone seems able to do pedicures here. Very strange.

Tonight Chris and Stu are going to be cooking us a meal in our apartment, and then we are meant to be heading out to a nightclub as it is Friday. Should be interesting.

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