A charming city!

It's a good thing there are no rules about how many cities you can be in love with, because I adore Prague just as much as I adored Kraków. By noon today I knew why Miss Judy, my piano teacher, loves this city so much. 

Marni, the early riser, was of course up before me and she woke me up at 9 (we went to bed really late last night). I finally joined her in the lobby a little before 10. She had bought some little rolls and croissants at the breakfast bar and she very kindly saved a few for me. We had a brief look at our map and then set off for a recommended place called the Café Louvre to get hot chocolate. Turned out, this café has been around since 1902, and many famous people have eaten there over the years (Albert Einstein was among the well-known guests of the past). The place had a fancy vibe, but the hot chocolate was surprisingly reasonable. (A great feature of Eastern European countries is that things are super cheap and you can afford to sometimes splurge a little more than you could in EU countries.) We each ordered one and it was like the Polish hot chocolates! Super thick like chocolate soup, and it even had a little skin on top! Reminded me of Grandma's chocolate pudding. After we had enjoyed that, we wandered to the river and admired the view of the castle and the hills on the other side. We walked along the bank to Charles Bridge next, which is the most famous bridge in the city. To be honest, there is nothing overly spectacular about the bridge itself, though the towers at each end and the statues lining it are cool. It's more the atmosphere of the whole thing. Definitely really crowded with tourists, but there are street musicians, artists, and cute jewelry booths all up and down the bridge, and the views of the river and the city are beautiful. I wished so much that Miss Judy could be there with me--I understood when I heard the four-man band playing a jazz tune and saw the colorful enameled cat and dog earrings for sale why she loves Prague. It's so her. I don't know whether the city just fits her style or whether her style adjusted to fit the city, but all I could think of on Charles Bridge was her!

We wanted to check out the Jewish quarter after that, so we decided to not go to the castle today. We walked back across the bridge, and I stopped to buy some earrings. It took awhile to decide because there were so many fun ones to choose from! I met up with Marni a few minutes later and she was drawing a statue, so I sat down with her. We drew for a bit until she finished her picture sufficiently enough (when you draw from observation, especially while traveling, you almost never have time to really finish a drawing!), and then set off for the Jewish quarter. On the way we passed the concert hall where the Prague Philharmonic plays. We admired the statue of Antonín Dvorák out in front and went into the gift shop to buy postcards. The famous old cemetery was closed today because of the Sabbath, but maybe we can go there tomorrow. We peeked in through the gates and it looks incredible: completely packed with gravestones crammed up against one another.

After that Marni wanted to get soup, because we had read that Czech soups are really good. We found a place that was, we later found out, just around the corner from the main square. This restaurant had pricier entrees but cheap soup, and it was in a cute little square with a Baroque church on one side. The rumors did not disappoint. I had potato and mushroom soup and it was delicious! Marni actually opted out of soup to try the roasted vegetables with goat cheese, and she was thoroughly satisfied with it. I tried one bite of hers and she was right, it was amazing. We had such a nice little lunch there in the square. It was a beautiful day, with big puffy clouds and blue sky, and there was an old man in a fedora playing mellow jazz on trombone and sax. We also saw a wedding party come out of the church to be showered with flower petals.

After that we went and had a look inside the church. It was St. Nicholas's, a Hussite church (Hussites come from the legacy of the martyr Jan Hus and combine Catholic liturgical traditions with Protestant methods of teaching directly from the Bible) and it was primarily Baroque with some Russian Orthodox elements. Really neat inside--the chandelier was shaped like the imperial Russian crown and was apparently dedicated by Tsar Nicholas II. 

Next we found ourselves in the main square, which was being set up for the finish of the Prague Marathon tomorrow. (All the cities are doing their marathons right now--Hamburg had theirs last weekend.) It was a bit chaotic. We looked briefly at the Astronomical Clock and then spotted a building that said "Alphonse Mucha & Salvador Dalí Exhibition." It sounded cool and had a student discount for admission, so we went for it. As it turned out, almost none of the pieces were originals, just prints. It was probably the most ghetto exhibit I've ever been in--on the upper stories of an old building with squeaky floors, and no security except for a person at the door to tear the ticket. The old man in the Mucha exhibit came out of a side room where I think he had been making his lunch. But it was still really cool! We saw a lot of really neat and incredibly disturbing and freakish pieces by Dalí, and got a ton of helpful artistic inspiration from the Mucha images. It was a fun detour. 

After that Marni bought some new colored pencils at an art shop, and then we decided to walk to Bethlehem Chapel, which had something else to do with Jan Hus. But it was a bit of a distance from the city center, mostly uphill, and we took a wrong turn and ended up in a slightly dingy and seedy part of town. So we finally gave up on that and climbed another hill (Prague has a lot of hills) that had a big bronze statue at the top of a medieval guy wielding a mace and wearing an eye patch. We weren't able to figure out who he was. The founder of the city?

By then we were tired and it was after 6, so we headed back to the city center. Marni stopped in at a coffee shop and then we went to the supermarket to get some stuff for dinner. I bought fruit for tomorrow and a small braid of cheese to go with the bread I had. Marni got bread and a sausage. It was getting rainy, so we just called it a day and went back to the hostel. In our room we shared the sausage and cheese. The cheese was good but VERY salty! I saved the rest for breakfast tomorrow. While we ate we talked to the guy in the bunk next to ours, who is from Melbourne. It was so fun, as always, to share and compare stories. Definitely my favorite part of staying in hostels!

Needless to say, it was a full day. I didn't even mention all the little shops we popped in and out of during our wanderings--antiques, books, marionettes, and more. Think it's time for bed!