Prague - Wednesday and Thursday (Luka, Prague, geocaching))

Wednesday 11 July 2018

Two consecutive exchanges couldn't have been more different.  I don't say at all that this one is less, just different.  Neither is it a disappointment, as I never have expectations, so I can't be disappointed.  It's a new adventure every time.

Today Ales suggested I get a special card for free and cheaper travel.  So, we went out to get passport photos taken for me and apply for the card.  It appears that in some cases persons between 65 and 70 (now I am giving my age away - haha), including visitors of the country, can travel for free on the train in Prague and cheaper on the bus outside the city.  Aren't I lucky?  To do this we went to nearby Luka where there is a big shopping centre and the Underground station.  (In hindsight, I got the feeling that this is only applicable to holders of an EU passport!)

Then Ales felt like having steak for lunch, so we went to the same restaurant again and had rump steak for lunch.  

Walking back to the house I took a few pictures of it and the street:

Ales & Lenka own the ground floor flat with garden

Later in the afternoon I wanted to go for a walk and since there were two geocaches that I wanted to get I had a reason for my walk.  They were both within walking distance and the sun was out, so I took my time and photographed wildflowers on the way.

The first cache I found very quickly, but...... it was crawling with big black ants and hidden in a hollow tree, so I was not going to poke my hand in the hole.  I have written to see if the CO would accept my find with the pictures, but haven't heard back from him yet.

Jinocany u "dalnice" (cache)

On the way to the next cache a noticed all these wildflowers on the roadside.  So good to see that here not everything is being killed off by weedkiller.  I even came across a plum tree, but the plums were not ripe yet, and a blackberry bush.  Brought back childhood memories....

My walk lead further through the village where there is also a small lake.

The second cache was near the lake that we walked past the day before.  It was going to be a difficult one, because of the terrain rating, so I didn't have my hopes high.  Just as well, because it appeared to be a tree-climb.  Not that it is a huge problem, but you need a stepladder for the first bit.  I've taken a few pictures, but don't think that I'll get back to that one.  There are a lot in Prague that I can get when I visit the city.  And the names of the caches I don't even attempt to pronounce.  The name of the village where I am staying is hard enough and I keep mixing it up with another town.  It is Jinočany. 

Jinočany - Mirešák (cache)

I walked around the lake towards the village and took a few pictures of the concrete steps.  These are there for the people to enter the water for a swim and return easily.  The bottom is very muddy.  Too muddy to stand or walk on it.  

I haven't really gotten around the house rules here.  Dinner was unexpectedly late.  I had a bit of salad earlier, when Lenka asked if I was hungry (and I am at about 6pm), but Ales cooked dinner and that was offered at about 9pm!

We watched the tennis most of the day and the world cup soccer came on after the tennis, but by then I was too tired to watch and went to bed.

Thursday 12 July 2018

In the meantime I have read a few blogs from travellers to Prague.  I notice that mine is sorely lacking in tourist, or any other information of general interest to others, but then, I write for pleasure and not for entertainment per sé, so I hope I will be forgiven. Often, I hope you will have noticed, if there is anything of wider interest, I include a link to that particular page, so if the reader is interested in more information they can read up on it....

Well here we go. It's my travel logbook anyway and want to show you some pictures of where I have been yesterday.  It was a full day, with long walks.  I don't mind long walks, as we used to criss-cross Paris and New York on foot, but.... my back is no longer up to these shenanigans.

I started by catching the 352 bus at 9:30am and rode to Luka and from there I found the 'yellow line' to Mustek in the city.  So far so good.  Now when I had finally found the exit, a feat in itself, I found myself at street level, but where?  In which direction would I have to walk?  Oh, I love this age of technology.  The printed map was not detailed enough to tell me anything that I needed to know, so I found Google Maps on my phone and started to walk.  First I came past an interesting looking alleyway which lead to a souvenir shop.

  
Fortunately I found myself in a part of the city that I hadn't been to before, so I noticed  lot of interesting things to photograph, not in the least the beautiful buildings.

It's hard to see, but there is a lot of painted detail here

Next I happened onto an inviting restaurant and since breakfast had been a long time ago I sat down and ordered an espresso and croissant.  No sacher torte or any other unhealthy sweets here!  Ah well, I can make do.... ;-)

On my further exploits I passed mounted police, and lots and lots of international shops.  The same ones you see in every big city nowadays.  One of them was not so international, but interesting non the less, as was the statue.  And of course some more of the architecture.

Il Commendatore - a tribute to Mozart's Don Govani

And before I knew it I was standing in front of the old town hall with the grandiose astronomical clock, only..... the clock wasn't there!!! To my disappointment it had been taken away for restoration and would be available again in summer 2018.  Well, summer is probably going to last too long for me, so I wont be seeing it back in place.  They had a kind of digital replacement on display, but I wasn't interested.  Not the real thing! However, to be honest, my disappointment would have been greater if I hadn't seen the clock in 2011.  It really is a must see, with all the different working parts and figures.  So much bigger than the one in Lund, Sweden.  You could keep watching and watching forever.  Here is a link to photos on my old blog from when we visited in 2011. It's probably worth looking at as well, because I have a short film on it of the working clock.

All I can show you here are some of the pictures that tell the story of the restoration of the clock: (Not necessarily taken in the right order, because of the many tourists)

Then I walked on along the various stalls in the square.  It brought bittersweet memories, having been there with Frank and remembering how we ate a trdelník and went for a horse-and-carriage ride....  It seems so long ago now, and I still remember the ohhhs and ahhhs and all the new impressions.

However, new impressions were in store for me today as well, as we had visited Prague only over two days and there is sooooo much to see and do.  So, this time I walked towards the river in search of the Charles Bridge.  Prague is on the Moldau (Vltava) river, which is very wide in places, and there are many bridges.  I believe that the Charles Bridge is one of the oldest and most vulnerable, because of its age and the damage by floods in the 1800s.  The bitumen road surface has been removed and the bridge is now only accessible to pedestrians.

Concert hall Rudolfinum

the tower on the north bank side of the Charles Bridge
and plenty of tourists, in case you missed them!!!

Buskers on the bridge

looking north

looking south

view from the south bank

the spot where Bruce and I will be having our geocaching event tomorrow

I wasn't sure for a while what to do, because it had started raining and my back was playing up as well.  I needed a rest.  I didn't feel like going to a restaurant, so I found a bench (the only dry one under a big tree) and had a rest in a beautiful park, lined with gardens full of flowering plants.  I had my lunch and sent a whatsapp to brother Wim.  Rang him as well, because we had to make sure that our communication would be working for his arrival on Saturday.  All went well.

From there I wandered around in this part of the old city and saw a myriad of interesting things again, not in the least this most awful graffiti sprayed Lennon wall.  How tourists in their multitudes can disfigure parts of old towns (and Prague isn't the only town by a long shot) is beyond me.  I also hate all the padlocks on bridges in every town and city.  And while I am on my hobby horse, even Australia does get its fair share with bottles, shoes and bicycles in trees, T-shirt clad ant hills, etc.  Why is it that everyone feels the need to leave their mark???  As it was, tourists had come prepared with spray cans and were busy spraying their 'art' work on the wall, taking photo's of their dapper deeds....

The Lennon Wall

Mill on the Devil's Canal

the infamous padlocks - not to mention the additional graffiti

The Devil's Canal

At this canal I 'found' another cache.  It was a virtual, so I only needed to take a picture of myself with the canal in the background.  The picture is not one of the best, so I am not going to show it here.  It's bad enough that I need it as proof for the cache. :-)

 Pražské Benátky - Prague Venice (virtual cache) 

And next I noticed another cache, a traditional, nearby, so I walked that way and had a very easy find, unlike the one at the Lennon Wall, which I didn't even attempt. 

Prague bridges 1 - Karluv most (cache)

Looking down on a French food festival

Looking very much like Venice - hence the earlier cache name: Prague Venice

the tower at the other side of the Charles Bridge

Here the horse carriages have been replaced by vintage cars -
quite tacky if you ask me, but tourists are the ones paying....

When I needed a little rest I sat down in a little square with one of the traditional trdelníks. From there I walked over to Starbucks for a cup of coffee, but the line was too long and I wasn't prepared to wait. Later I forgot all about it and went home without a cuppa.....

Trdelník

swans and ducks in the river

and even a musk rat...

...looking for food...

...but when it wasn't forthcoming...

...he made is way back into the water

bridges under bridges under bridges...

Statues at the Franz Kafka museum

This page should give you one or more videos of statues which move while they are peeing.....  Some call it provocative.  I prefer it over graffiti and padlocks. ;-)

A corner of one of the many embassies in this area

Buskers under the bridge

The spot where our geocaching is going to take place -
this time seen from the bridge

By now I had gotten pretty tired and I still needed to walk to central station, which was half an hour away, so I started my walk back to the old town part of Prague. 

This took me again across the bridge where I saw another busker and also took another selfie, because of yet another virtual cache on the bridge.

The long walk took me through side streets rather than the main ones and I came across this man 'blowing' soap bubbles for the children and also a tiny market place, hidden away behind one of those little alleyways.

And what do you see on your walks: a koala in Prague!

Cache my Czech (Prague) (virtual cache)

It's a picture! Not my favourite though, but required to claim the cache

Colourful soap bubbles

Two buildings (this one and the one below)
that I apparently had photographed in 2011 as well!

the market

A lost koala?

That then was the last of my pictures.  Eventually I made it to central station where I contacted Wim and sent him a few pictures of the shops near the entrance where I will be waiting on Saturday, as there seems to be more than one entrance.

From here I was going to take the train back to Jinočany (and I still have problems spelling the name!), but it took me a while to find the correct station entrance to the metro.  I finally found it at Gate C and arrived at Ales and Lenka's place without too many problems.  Well, okay then, there was one: I forgot that I would arrive home at the opposite bus stop and started walking in the wrong direction, but found out soon enough. ;-)