169 photos. That’s how many shots I took while exploring the heart of Prague today. Now I just have to upload them to my gallery – but I think I’ll wait until I have a better Internet connection available. There’s clearly something wrong when the front page of my blog (~400K including images) takes just 45 seconds to load on my cellphone and a whopping 3 minutes 40 seconds to load on my laptop connected via the so-called “high speed Internet access” here at the hotel.
High points:
- Crossing the Carluv most (Charles Bridge; note that I’m not going to attempt to include any of the Czech accents) in a freezing fog that made the cobblestones slippery but didn’t discourage hundreds of tourists and souvenir sellers
- The first souvenir shop on the east side of the bridge, where I bought a hooded sweatshirt (without which I wouldn’t have been able to keep going), and chatted with the staff for a while about Sun and the merits of different Linux distros
- Staromestske namesti, the Old Town Square. Simply stunning.
- An enormous cappucino at the Ebel coffee shop in Ungelt (the name means “no money”, intended to dissuade looters!)
- Josefov, the former Jewish ghetto
- Vaclavske namesti, a.k.a. Wenceslas Square , where I explored several bookshops as well as the local Marks & Spencer(!)
- Sunday brunch at the Restaurace “Sarah Bernhardt” in the Hotel Paris
After brunch I headed back to the Old Town Square and then across the Charles Bridge, intending to explore Prazsky hrad (Prague Castle) and the Hradcany district. But as I reached the Malostranske namesti, I suddenly realized that I’d reached my limit (in terms of energy and temperature), so I walked back to the Malostranska metro station and caught a train the two stops back to my hotel. A thoroughly satisfying 6 hours (and it felt longer, which I think is good).