Day 7 – Prague

St. Vitus Cathedral

Prague, or Praha in the Czech language, is really a very beautiful city. This mainly stems from the fact that it was largely spared the bombings of World War II and many of their older buildings still remain. Prague dates back to Roman times but the town as it is today is largely due to Charles IV, King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor. He established Prague as his capital city and built the Charles Bridge in 1357, started building the St. Vitus Cathedral and laid out the many of the plans for the city.

Prague Castle and St. Vitus viewed from the Charles Bridge

Prague is a city loosely divided into sections – the old Jewish quarter, the Old Town quarter where we are staying, the castle district, New Town, Lesser Town, etc. It is also a walking town with many pedestrian zones. We can testify to the walk-ability of Prague as we actually walked from Prague Castle on the west side of town to our hotel on the east side of town. It was roughly 2 miles, but fortunately mostly downhill as the castle is on one of the highest points in town. This was part of our Prague City tour.

Prague's Astronomical Clock

Speaking of the Jewish quarter, unlike the tours in Munich, our guide openly talked about the extermination of the Jews during WWII and other atrocities committed by the Nazis. What she didn’t talk about so much was also interesting and that was their occupation by the Russians until 1989. She kind of hinted at problems but didn’t criticize anything. Maybe she was afraid of a Russian comeback or maybe just that she lived through that period.

We saw all the major sites of Prague today and then some. We were at Prague castle when then they did the changing of the guard so we got to see that really up close. We toured St. Vitus Cathedral, walked down the hill from the castle through the Lesser Town section and across the Charles Bridge and back into Old Town. The squares in Prague are amazing. The Old Town square was exceptionally beautiful with the twin towers of the Church of Our Lady and the old City Hall with its astronomical clock dating back to 1410.

Old Town Square at dusk

Here are some little known facts from our tour. One, “Good King Wenceslaus” of Christmas carol fame was really only a prince. Two, the most beloved US President here is Woodrow Wilson and the main train station was named after him until the communists changed its name. It has since been changed back to Wilsonova. The reason that Wilson is so popular is that after WWI, he made Czechoslovakia an independent republic. Prior to that, they had been ruled by the Hapsburg dynasty and the Holy Roman Empire since the middle ages. Three, the Czech Republic is one of the newest countries in the world, coming into existence only in 1993 when Czechoslovakia was split into two pieces. Four, she claimed that the Czechs drink more beer per capita than any other country. I don’t know about that one as we personally saw a lot of beer being drunk in Germany.