My Diary from our Trip to Bohemia May 1999 May 3 Monday The flight from Arlanda to Prague takes just two hours. Partly the sky was clear so we could see the ground, the fields which differed in colour from green and brown and yellow and the towns and cities and rivers.
Just before landing I noticed a city where three rivers flow together, could it be Elbe and Moldau and another smaller one?
 StGeorg Basilica down to the Golden Lane. There you can see very small old houses which are built with the castle wall as the backside of the house. These houses nowadays hold small shops where you can buy Czech handicraft, art, books, jewellery etc. After that we walked down some stairs, passing the Wallenstein Palace to a Luncheon Restaurant. We were served Czech food: A mushroom soap, dressed pork slices with a kind of mashed potatoes and pickled gherkin, a nothing tasting dessert and coffee. To that meal we naturally drank real Pilsener Beer. Pilsner Urquell..After lunch the walk went on over the square in Mala Straná. The crowds were not as pushing as at the castle surroundings. We passed the Charles Bridge (Karlúv Most), the most famous monument in Prague.It is bordered by statues of saints and other famous persons out of the more then one thousand year long history of Prague and Bohemia. At each end there is a defence tower and Leif told about the event in the seventeenth century when the Swedes tried to occupy the town. They passed the bridge but they did not advance further than to the tower at the Old Town side. We could see holes after the bullets on the tower. On the townside of the tower there were several skilled sculptures but seen from the bridge on the outer side it was totally naked - the Swedes took all the sculptures as booty and now you probably can find them in some Swedish castle----  We walked again passing the narrow street Karlova and passed a small square and so we arrived to the Market Place of the Old Town (Staromestské Namestí). We admired the astronomic clock at the town hall and all the nice old houses with beautiful fronts. Lots of market stalls, mostly with those things which are sold for the tourists: bohemian glassware, porcelain, a blacksmith, trinkets, handicraft, leatherware, viewcards, books, wooden toys,etc.
When we had arrived to Václavplatsen (Václavské námesti) the group was dismissed for wanderings on our own. My husband and I walked slowly back to our hotel, my legs could hardly bear me any longer. So we had a rest for the afternoon, and we did not join the group to Villa Bertramka for a Mozart evening.
We had a nice rest after a day filled with impressions of the old well restored beautiful buildings from several architectural epoques. |
The music (if you can hear it) is a recording of "The Moldau" by Bedrich Smetana.