Friday, June 8
Prague is known for having some curious statues. Many of them were created by a rather enigmatic man named David Cerny, a Czech artist. One of his most well known pieces is entitled, “Sigmund Freud Hanging”. It’s a bronze sculpture suspended from a wire over a street corner. It’s fairly high up so if you’re not looking for it you’re not likely to see it. We knew it was there and it still took us a few minutes to locate it.
(Sigmund Freud Hanging)
One of the famous sights to see in Town is the Infant Jesus of Prague. It’s a wooden figure of Christ as a child that was likely carved around 1340 in Spain. It came to Bohemia in 1526 with María Maximiliana Manriquez de Lara y Mendoza of Spain when she married a Czech nobleman named Vratislav of Pernstn. Eventually the statue was donated to the Carmelite friars and now rests in the Church of Our Lady Victorious and The Infant Jesus of Prague.
During the Thirty Years War the friary was plundered and the statue was thrown into a pile of rubbish behind the alter with its hands broken off. In 1637 it was found by Father Cyrillus and placed in the church’s oratory. One day, while praying before the statue, Father Cyrillus is said to have heard a voice saying, “Have pity on me, and I will have pity on you. Give me my hands, and I will give you peace. The more you honour me, the more I will bless you.” Since then miraculous healings have been attributed to the statue.
The infant has an extensive wardrobe consisting of over 100 robes and several crowns. The duty of dressing the infant falls to the Carmelite Sisters of the Child of Jesus. He is dressed in different outfits based on the season and special occasions – Green for everyday, Purple for Lent, Candlemas and Advent, Red or Gold for Christmas and Easter and Royal Blue for the Immaculate Conception and Feast of the Assumption. A museum on the second floor displays just some of the clothes that have been donated to the Infant many of which contain golden threads, exotic fabrics and precious stones. Clothes have been donated by such notables as the Empress Maria Theresa and the Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria. One of the crowns was recently donated by Pope Benedict XVI upon his visit to the church.
(The Infant Jesus of Prague)
Afterwards we continued south and walked along the West side of the river. The river has a number of small waterfalls and we pondered how the boats managed to avoid them. We noticed that they ran along the river’s edge through a canal but still couldn’t imagine how they navigated the change in elevation. Today we found the answer: they use a series of locks. We saw the remnants of the old gas engines that used to power the locks. Today the locks are run by electric motors.
Along the way we passed a large building containing the Staropramen Brewery. Staropramen is the second largest brewery in the Czech Republic (the largest brewery is Pilsner Urqell). They have been in business since 1869. The name literally means, “Old Spring”. Today they’re owned by Molsen Coors. The brewery offers several tours per day in several languages. We might do the tour on another day.
Fun Fact: The Czech Republic has the highest beer consumption per capita in the entire world.
Eventually we came to our destination: The Wine Food Market. All we really knew was that it was a highly recommended market. To our delight we found that it was a large Italian Salumeria, an Italian bakery and an Italian restaurant in a single building.
We did a quick tour of the store before sitting down for lunch in the restaurant. We took notice of what was on everyone else’s table. The food looked and smelled wonderful. We felt like we were back in Italy. The menu had sandwiches, fresh fish, soups and pastas. We ordered a large pizza with spicy salami and washed it down with homemade iced tea. For dessert we wandered over to the bakery. We ordered a bread to take home and an eclair for immediate consumption. The eclair had a thick white icing and was generously filled with dark chocolate cream. Everything was so good it made us long for a return trip to Italy.
Fully refreshed we went back into the market. This time we meant business. We walked away with spicy salami, parmesan cheese, smoked scamorza cheese, apricot jam, honey, some apples and a bottle of wine. It was a lot to lug over two miles back to our apartment but we didn’t care. The prices were a bit higher than we would have paid in Italy for the same items but they weren’t available anywhere else.
On our way home we accidentally ran into another curious sculpture. This was was created by Michal Trpak, another Czech artist, and is entitled, “Slight Uncertainty”. It’s a figure of a man suspended from a wire by his umbrella. We couldn’t find any useful information about it. No, not all of Prague’s sculptures are hanging over your head. 😀
(Slight Uncertainty)
Somewhere (we can’t remember) we’d heard that quite a few movies were filmed in Prague so we decided to spend the evening watching some and trying to see if we recognized the locations. Google found quite a few interesting choices including Amadeus, Les Miserables, Yentl, The Illusionist and The Bridge at Remagen. The only one available on Netflix was Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. It actually starts off in the Budapest train station and has a number of scenes in Prague. It was fun to see.
* For anyone who didn’t realize it the title of this blog is a quote from a Seinfeld episode.
Distance walked: 6.4 miles
Saturday, June 9
The first order of the day was to find a coffee shop. We headed over to a place called La Bohème Café. With a name like that how could we resist? It had been well reviewed and was an easy walk from the apartment.
The café is due East from our place just past Wenceslas Square. We quickly realized that this was a very residential part of Town, the streets were fairly empty and there were no tourists. Finally, a taste of the real Prague.
The coffee shop had a nice array of options. We really wanted to try one of the fancy filter coffees but they were about $5.00 a piece so we settled for a couple of cappuccinos. In spite of their location they still seem to have tourist prices!
The café is charming. It’s a large space with soaring ceilings decorated in the style of a library. The front area has comfortable sofas and chairs while in the back there are upholstered booths with tables. The coffee was very good. They also had a few cakes for sale but we didn’t try them.
Our next destination was one of the National Museum buildings. The location we were interested in was at the top of Wenceslas Square. We looked online and found that the building was closed for renovation but that the collections had been moved to the adjacent building. The original building had been severely damaged in a conflict with the Soviets in 1963 and had fallen into disrepair. Renovations have recently begun and are expected to take several years. The new building was constructed during the Soviet occupation, is rather utilitarian looking and has been derided as looking “brutish”. It’s definitely out of step with the surrounding architecture.
The museum only houses temporarily exhibitions. None of the choices interested us so we left and headed over to Municipal House, which is quite close to our apartment.
During the middle ages the site was the home of a royal palace. The remains were demolished in the early 20th century and a new building was built in Art Nouveau style. The interior is decorated in Art Deco style. Several notable artists helped with the decor including Alfons Mucha. The building houses a concert hall, civic offices and several restaurants. You can tour the building for about $15 per person. We were sorely tempted to attend the evening’s concert which featured the Saint Saen’s Cello Concert performed on the Double Bass, the Schumann Piano Concerto and Dvorák’s New World Symphony but tickets were $45 a piece and we had low expectations of the groups that were performing.
Finally we headed over to an Irish pub to watch the Ladies Singles finals from the French Open. The pub is a well known sports bar and has many screens where you can simultaneously watch several events. We ordered lunch consisting of an Irish cheddar and onion sandwich as well as a BLT with Irish bacon. Both came with salads and were surprisingly delicious. During the course of the match we ordered a Staropramen beer and a mojito, neither of which we’d ever had before. The beer was light and devoid of the skunky flavor that we abhor. The mojito was quite good. We thought that it was a tequila drink but found that it is normally made with white rum.
We were rooting for the American, Sloan Stevens, who gave it her all but in the end Simona Halep prevailed and captured her first major title.
Distance walked: 4.2 miles
Was it breathtaking?
Have you ever seen those creepy dolls in the stores? Nuf said!