To begin, I love trains. So I deeply enjoyed making the journey to Prague and then Dresden on the rails. There were some wonderful sites to see, too, since we stayed alongside the river most of the way. Some beautiful villages were nestled among the hills in between Prague and Dresden and I could see kayakers and fishermen along the river on the way. It really made the travel go by fast.
Since I had already spent a little time getting to know Prague, I was able to relax this time and really get a good look at the city. It's largely dominated by the expanse of the Vltava River which divides the city into two sides. The west side is home to Prazsky Hrad (or Prague Castle, more on it later) enclosed around the lavish St. Vitus Cathedral and was formerly the "noble" side where all of the royalty and noblemen lived. The buildings are large and flamboyant to show the wealth of their former residents and most of them now act as international embassies (whaddya know?). The east side was the commoner side and holds the town square, the famous clock tower and pretty much the rest of the city. They are separated by many bridges, the most famous, and oldest, being the St. Charles bridge. It is always full of people during the day and many vendors and musicians line the outside edges along with some exquisite baroque statuary.
I already wrote a little bit about the Lennon wall in a previous post (its on the noble side by the way), so this time just enjoy the pictures:
After visiting the Lennon Wall, we were free to explore the city so a small group of us climbed the hill for an excellent view, then made our way slowly back across to the river.
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We got a great view of the St. Charles Bridge on our way back.
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The Prague Castle was one of the main focuses of our trip. We got up early on our second day and trekked up the hill to see it. The most enjoyable experience for me was viewing the interior of the St. Vitus Cathedral. It's a massive gothic style church with a glorious interior filled with Baroque sculptures and garnishes. It houses the tombs of all the old kings of Prague as well as the relics of St. Wenceslas, a legendary figure in Czech history. The castle is apparently the most expansive in all of Europe. It's more of a chateau than what you might think of as a castle but it was still quite spectacular. Inside we saw a room where apparently all sorts of events were held and on one side was a window that had an interesting bit of history about it. According to our guides, for a long time in Prague's history there was a peculiar tradition of "defenestrations" (throwing people out of windows) and this window was a favorite for such a task. The first of these defenestrations even began the breakout of the Hussite war, and it just kept happening after that. It got so popular, in fact, many officials that were "fired" and allowed to leave through the front door considered themselves lucky to be doing so.
Dresden is only a couple hours by train away from Prague. We got there in the late morning so we had plenty of time to explore the city. Completely destroyed by the Allies at the end of WWII, Dresden has been almost completely rebuilt based of photographs of the old structures. The parts of the city that survived the firebombing are clearly marked by their charred exteriors making it impossible to forget what happened here. Clearly the most incredible monument of the rebuilding campaign is the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady in German). After the bombardment only an exterior wall was left standing, but in 1993 after much promoting, it was decided to reconstruct it using original 1720's plans. The views below are from the top of its great tower and provides an astounding 360˚ view of the city.
One more quick anecdote about Dresden– and if you're reading the blogs of anyone else on the trip than you may already know about this one. On the day of our trip, there just so happened to be an unexpected stampede through the city... of Americans (and our Czech guides). Apparently, we were all a little confused about the departing time of our train back to Prague, so when we realized it left in five minutes while we were in the middle of Dresden 20 minutes from the train station, we decided to pick up our pace, and then we picked it up again and so on until eventually most of us were sprinting through intersections, crowds of people, and even a street breakdancing performance at one point. Unfortunately, we didn't make it, but fortunately we did make the next one 2 hours later and had an unscheduled pivo break in while we waited. Not bad for only our third week here.
Thanks for reading and more to come!
Trav
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