Sunday, June 17
June 17th was Father’s Day in the United States. We wanted to send another Father’s Day thank you to our wonderful fathers for all their love and support. A special thanks is also appropriate to all our friends and family who are fathers, grandfathers, godfathers, stepfathers, uncles, brothers, etc. who are there every day helping to guide future generations. Your love and hard work are greatly appreciated.
It was a beautiful Sunday morning here in Prague so we headed back down along the river towards Vyšehrad. We had cut our previous trip short due to weather and today was our opportunity to see all of the things we missed.
We started by checking out the cemetery. Many famous people including writers, musicians, artists and politicians are buried there. The cemetery is rather large and we enjoyed seeing the many varied and interesting headstones and monuments all the while looking out for the grave sites of Smetana, Dvořák and Mucha.
(Grave of Bedřich Smetana)
Composers Smetana and Dvořák each have individual plots with rather impressive monuments. We had been expecting the artist Alfons Mucha to be buried in a grand Art Deco monument but we found his final resting place in a large monument along with over a dozen other people. It’s not clear why he doesn’t have a site of his own.
We continued through the beautifully manicured sculpture gardens to one of the many scenic overlooks. The air was particularly clear so we took lots of photos.
The person manning the nearby information booth informed us that guided tours of the Gorlice (Underground) were available every hour so we killed some time by having lunch at a café on the grounds. We shared an order of fish and chips. It was very good and much better than we expected.
We arrived at the Gorlice about ten minutes early and were handed a couple of printed informational sheets in English. The person told us that we needn’t wait for the tour and that we should just go by ourselves. It was obvious he just didn’t feel like giving the tour. That was fine with us. We’d be able to take our time and see everything at a leisurely rate.
We entered what looked like a long narrow cave. It was dark and lit by only a few lanterns. We imagined how dark and dirty the space must have been hundreds of years ago when candles, torches and lamps would have been the only source of light. The passage was a tunnel more than 30 feet below the main walls. It was a long and winding route that was used to move people and equipment from place to place within the castle without exposing them to enemy attack. Eventually we got to a large room with a towering three story barrel vaulted ceiling. Many of the original sculptures that adorned the Charles Bridge in the early 1700s were stored there for safekeeping (the sculptures that can be seen on the bridge today are copies of the originals).
(Underground Tunnel)
The castle grounds are very beautiful and a perfect place to spend a day. There are gardens, playgrounds, sculpture gardens and several chapels to see in addition to the Cathedral, cemetery and underground. We particularly enjoyed the view from the parapets and the walkways along the bottom of the walls. They also have a gallery but the current exhibit didn’t interest us.
After climbing down the hill we went in search of a fair that we’d seen on the other side of the river. That morning, as we climbed the many stairs to enter the castle, we’d noticed dozens of tents and heard live music. It seemed like something that was worth checking out. It turned out to be a Cider Festival. Most of the booths were selling cider based drinks, foods made with/cooked with cider and so forth. We sampled a few snacks but didn’t find it too interesting.
Distance walked: 8.1 miles
Monday, June 18
We decided to check out nearby Saint James Church. It’s a beautiful Baroque style church near Old Town Square. When we got there we saw a sign saying that the church was closed on Mondays (we could read it – it was in Latin). We’ll have to go back and see it another day.
Since we were in the neighborhood we headed over to a gallery that had three floors of exhibits each featuring either Dali, Warhol or Mucha. We intended to see the Mucha exhibit.
Along the way we found a well known sculpture by David Černý. It’s a depiction of King Wenceslas riding an upside-down dead horse hanging from the ceiling of the Lucerna Palace. It’s a sarcastic reference to the famous equestrian statue of King Wenceslas in nearby Wenceslas Square. This is the same artist who did the hanging Sigmund Freud.
(King Wenceslas by David Černý)
Unlike the Mucha museum that we had been to a few days ago, where we had seen many of his large scale posters, this exhibit focused on more of his functional artwork. They had displays of menus, postcards, banknotes, stamps, book illustrations and household decorations like vases and lamps. There were seven large rooms full of his works. The gift shop had a nice selection of items for sale with his designs.
(Advertisement by Mucha)
Next we walked over to Municipal House with the idea of taking the tour. On Mondays tours are only given in the late afternoon. Since it was lunch time we consoled ourselves with a meal at one of Municipal House’s restaurants. There are two lovely restaurants at the street level that are decorated in the Art Deco style but we went to the restaurant downstairs – it still had the Art Deco stained glass windows but was otherwise decorated as a Bavarian Beer Garden. They had a popular Czech Pilsner on tap and we thought we might like it better than when we had tried it from a bottle.
Deborah ordered a traditional Czech potato soup and the Pilsner beer. I ordered the beef goulash. It came with sausage, fried onions and bread dumplings. I decided to try the special dark lager that they were featuring this month. As if that wasn’t enough they gave us a basket of different homemade breads. It was all very tasty. The dark lager was very good but the Pilsner was still a little too skunky for our taste.
(Potato Soup, Goulash and Beer)
Distance walked: 4.7 miles