Wednesday, June 6
We had a full day planned. The idea was to kill some time before getting to the Trade Fair National Gallery location. The gallery is supposed to be free of charge from 3:00 pm til 6:00 pm on the first Wednesday of every month.
We started off with a walk across the Charles Bridge. The bridge is always crammed with tourists and home to a myriad of trinket sellers, art dealers and street musicians. We’ve been impressed with the quality of the street music here in Prague. It’s surprising to see that Dixieland Jazz of all things is very popular. Most of what we’ve heard is either Jazz or classical with the instrumentation ranging from single instrumentalists accompanied by a boom box to six piece ensembles. We hope that the quality extends to the theaters because we have opera tickets for next week. Fingers crossed.
The price for museums and concerts here is much higher than any place else we’ve been. The opera tickets cost almost as much as prime seats in the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Virtually every church has daily concerts and they charge around as much as $35 per person. Even the cost for the National Museums has been higher than expected.
Once on the West side of the river we walked over to the Lennon Wall. It’s a tribute to John Lennon and since the 1980s has been covered in graffiti and lyrics to Beatles songs. In 1988 students wrote grievances about the communist government on it which lead to a clash with hundreds of students. Occasionally the government would paint over the wall only to find that the next day it was once again filled with flowers, poems, grievances and the like. Today the wall is a symbol of peace and love. It’s a very popular place for tourists to take pictures.
(John Lennon Wall)
Afterwards we took the opportunity to explore Malá Strana or The Lesser Town. The town was founded by the Bohemians in 1257 and served as a residence for kings and nobles. The town is located at the bottom of the hill upon which Prague Castle rests. Today it has upscale shops, museums, gardens and churches. Many of the former royal residences are now used as government buildings.
Ordinarily we’re not too excited about seeing chain stores but we were pleased to see that there was an Amorino in Malá Strana. They have the best gelato outside of Italy and we just couldn’t resist. I had a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of amarena in a cup while Deborah had a frappe made with espresso and gelato. The total cost was just over $14 but we considered it money well spent.
(Snack at Amorino)
Eventually we worked our way over two miles to the north and got to the museum at around 2:30 pm. We decided to get something cool to drink while we waited and sat down in the adjoining cafe. At ten minutes to the hour a waitress finally came by to take our order. We decided that by the time we ordered, drank and paid the museum would be closed so we just left and went over to the ticket office.
The ticket clerk informed us that the cost of tickets would be $7.50 each. We explained that the first Wednesday of the month was supposed to be free of charge in the afternoon but apparently she’d never heard of that. We paid for our tickets and got a map showing that two of the four floors were currently closed. The floors that were open had exhibits of Czech Modern Art (1850-1930) and Czech Modern Art (1930-present). The fourth floor also had an exhibit of Viennese Modernism. We were looking forward to seeing Mucha’s Slav Epic; the rest was just gravy.
We started on the fourth floor with the Viennese works. They had several Klimts on display including a large scale work entitled The Virgin. They were very impressive. Eventually we made our way over to the Czech 1850-1930. We didn’t recognize many of the artists presented but found nay of them to be interesting.
(The Týn Cathedral by Rudolf von Alt – 1843)
They also had a stunning painting called Bohemian Heart Charity which Mucha had done in 1917. We didn’t see the Slav Epic and figured it was elsewhere.
(Bohemian Heart Charity by Alfons Mucha – 1917)
Next went to the second floor to see the exhibit more modern works. We don’t tend to enjoy these works as well.
We returned to the main floor and asked two different docents about the location of the Slav Epic. We were pretty sure that it was supposed to be in that museum. One docent told us in broken English that it was there last year, was currently in storage and would be moved to another museum next year. Another told us it was on display in the city of Brno. When we got home we did some more googling and found that it was in fact in Brno until the end of 2018. We might have to take a train ride out there to see it.
We took the scenic route back home and walked over the bridge that crosses an Štvanice in the river. There wasn’t much on the island but we did wind up taking another part of the city. By the time we hit Old Town Square the sun was low in the sky and the light was perfect for taking photos.
Distance walked: 9.2 miles