Gregory Mulholland

Like all of our travels so far, our first full day of Prague was full of walking. We started in the morning by trying to go to a coffee shop called Káva Káva Káva (Coffee Coffee Coffee in English). Their espresso machine was broken though, so they weren’t really serving. We walked a few blocks over to a bookshop and coffee shop called The Globe Bookshop and Café. It was really good. They had amazing food. Being here reminds both me and Kelly how much we miss eating food with real flavor.

After breakfast, we headed over to the market (not unlike the one in Cambridge) and did some shopping. We bought a small watercolor of the city and a few other small things that will hopefully survive the trip from here to Cambridge and again from Cambridge home. We returned our purchase to the pensione and headed out for a day of sightseeing.

We boarded the underground and headed to Malostranská. This stop is at the foot of the old Prague Castle. We then walked up a bunch of stairs to the entrance of the castle. I swear we are doing a construction tour of Europe. Everywhere we go, things are under major renovation. There was no difference here. We squeezed through a narrow walkway and headed into the castle grounds. If you are wondering why I don’t have any pictures of the castle, it is because it isn’t a castle like you would normally think with a keep and walls. It is simply a fortified area of the city which has a palace and a cathedral at the center. In this case, because of some serious one-upsmanship over the years, there are like 6 palaces within the castle walls.

Once inside the walls, we went and visited St. Vitus’s Cathedral. It was started during the gothic period, but not finished until 1929, which led to some serious contrast. The stained glass was particularly varied but all equally beautiful:

After the cathedral, we walked around the palace grounds for a while. The palace itself was closed, so we couldn’t go in. We didn’t spend too much more time at the castle, since it was pretty packed with tourists. We headed back down the hill and walked toward St. Nicholas’s Church. It was pretty much the polar opposite of the cathedral that sits above it on a hill. It was covered with pink marble with enormous white statues of saints and popes and other important figures. Kelly pointed out that there was very little artificial lighting inside. The windows in the roof kept the church brightly lit. It was a remarkable place.

We then walked toward the river, and just happened to be at the end of Charles Bridge. This bridge, built in the 14^th century, was built by Charlemagne’s uncle Charles IV. It has gothic towers at either end and offers a great view of the River Vltava. From it you can see many of the domes and towers of the Old City:

We followed the road away from the bridge, and made our way to the center of the Old City. There we could see the Týn Church dominating the skyline:

Closer to earth, we were able to see the Orloj, the famous astronomical clock of Prague. It was supposed to be really amazing to see. On the hour it has a number of figures that perform. It was definitely something to see, but I don’t think it was as impressive as some say. Nevertheless, we were joined by hundreds of people on the hour to watch the performance. More importantly, neither Kelly nor I could really figure out how to read it. Upon visiting it another time, we think we have an idea of how it works, but we are still questioning a few things.

After seeing the clock, we continued to walk through the Jewish Quarter, which we will visit more thoroughly tomorrow. With this walk, we decided we had had enough walking for a bit and returned to our pensione to rest our sore feet. We headed to dinner around the corner from our pensione. It was absolutely amazing. We both had traditional Czech dishes. Like last night, the food was substantial and delicious. We tried cabernet wine from the Moravia region and loved it.

After a long relaxing dinner, we decided to take a bit of a walk to get the blood flowing. This is when we discovered something really wild: the Orloj is about 200m from our pensione. We had walked right by the place we were staying without ever knowing it. We didn’t really look at the map all afternoon and had really just wandered about, so it was really amazing that we were less than 2 blocks from it. We decided to walk to Charles Bridge again and take a look around, since we knew it wasn’t far and we had heard that the buildings looked really cool at night. I didn’t have my Nikon camera with me (which is still giving me problems), so we did our best to take some night pictures with our point and shoot cameras. Those pictures will be up soon. After seeing Charles Bridge, we walked back toward the pensione and called it a night.

Now I am trying Word 2007’s new blog post feature to see how well it will perform when I get home on Tuesday.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

FFor Christmas, Kelly gave me a great present. She was planning a trip to Prague in the Czech Republic for us. Yesterday morning, we left Cambridge for Prague. We flew with SkyEurope, a Slovenian airline that was about the same price as Ryan Air, but was very easy to deal with (as opposed to Ryan Air which nearly gives me an aneurysm every time we look at their website). We were able to board our plane with no problem and fly to Prague. Once there, we bought 3-day bus/tram/metro passes and followed our pensione’s instructions about how to get to it. We made it as far as the correct metro stop without trouble. When we emerged at street level, we tried to follow the directions but couldn’t seem to find where we belonged. We ended up using a map in our tour book to find it by its address. When we got there, we realized we had been about 50m away when we had originally followed the directions and just hadn’t been able to see it. On another interesting note, we are one street away from NCSU’s Prague Institute. We went to look for it and couldn’t find it, but it is hidden in a courtyard somewhere. Walking in on our first night, Kelly saw someone she recognized though.

We ate dinner at a little over-authentic Czech restaurant with delicious food on our first night, then we headed in to plan our first full day in the city.

I am cursed when it comes to traveling and using my debit card. Let me give you a few examples of some major trips where I have had trouble with this:

Paris and the rest of Europe
When I studied in Spain over the summer of 2003, I was planning to meet Win in Paris afterward. On the day I was supposed to leave, I packed my bags and went to the airport. There, I planned to get some Euros and top up my cell phone SIM card using the ATM. When I put my card in the airport ATM, the system locked up and wouldn’t respond to any buttons. To make matters worse, it was Sunday in Spain. Good luck getting anything done then. For the next 2 weeks and all of my travels, I was lost without my card.

Seville and Granada
This year, on the weekend before Kelly and I went to Seville and Granada, we went to London with Will and Jackie. I’m still not quite sure how it happened, but when I returned to Cambridge after that mini-trip I didn’t have my debit card any more. Of course I cancelled it right away, and within 10 days I had a new one. It did not come, however, before we left for Spain. I was stuck using my US card and paying the extra charges. Luckily, it was only for 2 days.

Prague
Yesterday, before we left for Prague, I tried (once again) to top up my cell phone. This time I was doing it online. I kept getting an error every time I tried to do it. I figured that since I had used my card the day before, the website must be at fault. I was wrong. On the way to the bus station, I stopped at an ATM to get some cash. Lo and behold, my card was rejected again. Luckily, at that ATM, I happened to be standing in front of a Barclay’s. I went in and, sensing my worry, one of the tellers told me that my account had been flagged (I guess because I had just booked a trip using my card) and that they just wanted to verify that all the charges on the account were genuine. After checking, I assured them that everything was fine. She then put me on the phone with customer service to get the safeguard removed. This, mind you, all started less than 45 minutes before we were supposed to be on the bus to Luton Airport. Finally, I was able to get it cleared up and even thought ahead enough to tell them that I would be in Prague and not to cut me off over the weekend.

I really enjoy traveling, but it seems that every time I go somewhere, something happens. Hopefully I can thwart that next time.