We left Berlin on Thursday and took a direct train to Prague.
Then we found our way to Info and got directions to get on Tram 8 to get to our motel.
The hotel is one that our next bike tour starts from. We will get our briefing and bikes on Sunday.
The building is impressive. It was built in 1950.
We walked in the front doors and we were impressed. Steve got all excited about the 1950 CZ motorcycle.
Once we got in the room we put our card key in the slot to work the lights.
I used Google maps and found a poke bowl place we could walk to for supper.
On the way we passed some excited kids working trains on an elaborate track set up.
The Poké Bowl had just opened for business three days before. It was a good meal.
The kids were still working the model trains when we walked back to the motel.
The tracks were in front of what looked like a technical school.
On Friday we took the tram to get to the castle district.
We entered the area by climbing a lot of stairs.
The complex has lots of courtyards, some shops and restaurants, a huge cathedral, the chancellor's offices, and a smaller church and the castle which is a museum of artifacts now.
There is an elaborate cage over the old well.
The chancellor's flag was up, indicating he was in his offices.
We bought tickets and Steve used Rick Steve's guide to inform us as we walked around.
First we went into the huge and elaborate cathedral.
We were in the huge ancient cathedral. There were a lot of people walking along with us. Steve and I got to one side by a large stained glass window. He was reading to me from Rick Steves book about the window. Only it talked about a woman with out stretched hands and her grandson beneath her learning to pray. But the figure I saw was of an old man with a mustach and a flowing beard.
Steve insisted he saw the grandmother. We went back and forth for several minutes while a tour guide spoke loudly in Czech or Polish or Russian behind us. Was he looking higher than me? Was he looking lower? Where was he seeing this woman and child?
Finally we stepped on to the next window and it became very clear we had been in front of the wrong window. Now the story in the glass unfolded in magnificent color.
There is an older part and a newer part of the cathedral. There was a "temprary" wall put up to protect the older part while the newer part was being worked on. That wall was up 400 years! It took that long due to wars and changes in who was ruling the area.
Sometime in the history the pipe organ was moved.
I noticed some of the areas needed dusting! How ancient is that knee fuzz?
One tomb was silver. Steve said it was a ton of silver. I am sorry if you are catholic and are offended, but I was very much reminded of House on the Rock in Wisconsin. There were lots of gaudy, over the top, artifacts.
Tourists could put a coin in and light a candle for a loved one. I wanted to light a candle for a friend but I didn't have any coins. Steve said you light it for people who had already passed. Hmmm. I would think prayers before your loved ones die would be a better thing to do. But that's just me.
The king had his own box. He could come to mass in his jammies if he wanted to.
Tiled art on the exterior of the cathedral.
This window has sculptures of some more modern men under it. Those are the architects that finally finished the huge 400 year project to add to the cathedral. It was completed in the 1800s
If you rule a city you need a courthouse and a records room.
The courtroom had paintings with very elaborate frames.
The jewels in the real crown are real. These were just fake replicas.
There was another church on the castle grounds. This one may have been protestant, it was less elaborate, much smaller.
It appears they liked to use real human bones in their alters.
At noon we were in the garden overlooking the city when church bells began to ring all over, including at the cathedral.
We then got to see the prison or dungeon with its torture devices. People can be so evil!
The rack is pictured below.
We went to a hallway that dead ended. With a crowd of people it isn't a good plan to deadend. Just saying. The hallway was lined with ancient clothing and weapons and armor.
At the castle complex there is a museum of the Lobowicz Royal Family collection of artifacts shown in one of their castles. The art work here survived two regimes that took everything. First Hitler's German Reich and then when the war ended, Russia confiscated the collection.
After the art was returned to the Lobowicz family there was a lot of restoration they had to do. The bird art, made with watercolor and real bird feathers, was full of bugs and water damage when they got them back from the Russians.
This peice of art is one of the Seasons series of artwork. One of the Seasons is at the MET in New York. One in the series is still missing.
Lobowicz loved music and his ancestors used Handel's Messiah in a performance and hired Motzart to modify it for the performance.
The original paid receipt from Motzart is in the collection.
Below is a picture of Handel's Messiah with edits by Motzart.
The rounded head carving is from about 300 AD. The sword next to it is from about 500 BC!
A celestial globe showing the constellations.
The figure on the right of the guy with his head between his legs is an oil lamp depicting an acrobat.
The oldest pottery in the Lobowicz collection.
This wax baby Jesus was believed to have healing powers. I stood in front of it for a while hoping for a miracle. But I walked away still blowing my nose.
There were many portraits of the Lobowicz extended family and a chart of the family line. Mr. Lobowicz was living in Boston as a real estate mogul when after the Velvet Revolution in 1989 and the early 90's, Russia fell. He returned to the area to work to reclaim his family property.
Up in the hill of the Castle complex we had a few lovely views of the city below.
It was after five when we started walking down the hill. We were going to look for a pub to get some authentic Czech beer.
But I remembered on our walk from the tram to the castle, we had passed a place that was setting up for a Spring Wine Festival.
It had Czech beer too. And music!
We have another day and a half of exploring this old city. The pedestrian bridge and the old town are on my list of things to experience. It is already 11 am! We best get going!
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