The Pearl of the Czech Republic | Prague, Czech Republic

Prague, Czech Republic: This place was Amazing; Church in Prague with clock and astro-clock

We toured Prague on foot this morning and it really is the jewel of the Czech Republic. The outskirts of the city where our hotel was located was rather run down, but when you get to the center of Prague it really is something special. We saw a Synagogue that was a thousand years old, and the rest wasn�t much newer. Because of their age, most of the buildings are in the baroque and renaissance styles. I took a ton of pictures here, mostly of the Prague Cathedral. The Prague Parliament and office of the Prime Minister surround it. All together they�re a very photogenic scene. Leading up to all of this is a bridge with many sandstone statues of different rulers and religious leaders. The biggest of these is of Charles IV, a king who was important enough to have his statue made of bronze. The Catholic Church here was also astounding, adorned with lots of statures. Then we saw the biggest tourist destination here, the Old Town Square. In the middle of the square, you are surrounded on all sides by buildings and churches of the most exquisite styles, all hundreds of years old. The pictures are the only way I can describe it, I just don�t have the vocabulary to do them justice. Seeing things like this really make up for all the other pains of traveling. Exchange rates, language barriers, insane drivers, lack of tacos, all of this is whisked away by the majesty of these structures. Just as we were ready to leave, it started to rain for the first time since we got here. Thankfully it waited until we were done sightseeing and on the bus. Then we headed off to Austria. The landscapes in Austria aren�t all that different than everywhere else we�ve seen, except that there are a lot more windmills. Not the Dutch wooden windmills but large modern electric generating windmills. Also huge plots of farmland everywhere are devoted strictly to sunflowers. Millions of them dot the scenery and are quite beautiful to look at. Once upon a time Prague and Vienna had a common ruler. The Hapsburgs have played a big part in both Czech and Austrian history. This one family ruled both these and other countries for over 800 years. The Czechs tried to revolt many times, but were rebuffed and punished quite harshly. The biggest revolt was known as the Thirty Years War. The Czechs just didn�t like being ruled by the Hapsburgs, on the other hand, the Austrians treated them like true royalty. Where in Prague you had statues of older rulers, Vienna is decorated wall-to-wall with Hapsburg statues. They are very proud of their lineage, and rightly so, as Austria probably would not exist without their constant warring for land with other nations. But this is also the land of composers like Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss, and Heiden; Artists like Klimt and Picasso (who wasn�t born here but lived here for many years) and the people here revere them just as much. We do too, which is why we signed up for our first optional excursion tonight, a concert by the Hofburg orchestra. I was alarmed that only a few people in our tour group came with us. We have been touring with mainly Australian and New Zealanders. The New Zealanders are pretty great people. The Australians, on the other hand, have about as much taste as your average pre-cambrian cave man. Odd for people only separated by a small body of water. Anyway, the concert was a real delight; filled with a great mix of ballads, opera, familiar stuff, and even comedic pieces. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. When we got back to the hotel we had to deal with the facts that our room had no air conditioning, and was situated directly behind a railway station that made the loud talkers in the Prague hotel sound like a deaf-mute library. You have to have the window open or you bake, but the trains sound like a 747 flying over every fifteen minutes or so. The Japanese have a phrase for it �shikata ga nai� or �There�s nothing that can be done about it.� I, however, prefer the phrase �The Hotel Kavalier sucks.�