Prague - Tuesday and Wednesday (Restaurace Na Poustce, Prague castle, Strahov Monastery)

Tuesday 17 July 2018

Tuesday: just a lazy day at home, although Wim and I went out for lunch to the local 'workman's pub' (Restaurace Na Poustce) with Ales, where I had a nice goulash.

Wednesday 18 July 2018

A busy day was scheduled, but became unexpectedly also a very long day.

We took the bus and underground as usual to the city, but this time changed lines and took two more stops so that we arrived at the other side of the river at Malostranská. We had the choice of taking the tram or walk up the hill.  Very courageous we decided to walk up hill.  We planned to visit the Prague Castle, the palace gardens and the Strahov Monastery.

The gardens were closest, so they were visited first.  There was an aviary in the gardens which contained a few big owls.  What the grey matter is on the pictures I have yet to find out, but we saw it later at one of the buildings and it seems to be a kind of calcium stalactites combined with some other mineral which has formed by the dripping of water of time.  However, this is just a guess at this stage.

I may add some more pictures in the future as I have not been taking many and Wim will have some that I don't have...

The path from the gardens to the castle was closed, so we walked through the streets of Malá Strana (Little Quarter) to find our way up the hill, taking a few pictures here and there.  Near the Monastery we took a picture of the view over Prague and sat a while in the shady court yard to recover from the climb in the heat.

Then we discovered that the library, the most important part of the monastery, would be closed until 1 pm, so we went and had lunch in the meantime.  I had seen a few people before having this lovely goulash soup in bread, so Wim and I decided to give that a try.

And when the library finally opened we joined the queue and admired the beautiful halls.  Unfortunately the taking of pictures was not allowed, but these days the internet provides a lot, so I do have one to show you what the inside looked like:

The next series of pictures is of the walk to the castle, the castle surroundings, gardens and views over Prague.

The castle was situated a bit lower on the hill then the monastery, so the way down was very gradual.  When we finally were back at the bottom near Malostranská station we still had some spare time, because we didn't want to go home for dinner.  As the Petrin Tower was not too far away and I still wanted to go there we took the funicular up the hill and walked to the tower.  Neither of us though felt like climbing it or taking the lift up, so we sat down at the little restaurant and had a basket of French fries and an ice cream.  We had our fill of nice views and the view from the top of the tower wouldn't vary much from where we had been standing so these two tired people took it easy. ;-)

After our meal we walked through the extensive park and gardens and meandered slowly down to street level.

As we now were closer to Anděl underground station than Malostranská we walked on.  On the way I bought a blister pack at a pharmacy, because I could hardly walk anymore from a nasty blister on my heel and knew that the next day we would be 'on the road' again.  

Eventually we were home by 9.30 pm.  The train rides are fine in Prague, but the local buses outside the centre don't go as often and generally we have to wait more than half an hour.  That's the part I don't like, but we can't change much about it...