PRAGUE MAY 2000 days 4&5
Text by Pink Oboe, pictures from the Prague Information Service.
day 1 - day 2 - day 3 - days 4&5
Still feeling rather frail, I staggered up in the morning but only in time for the 8.30 rendezvous for breakfast: no early excursion. It shows the impact that the day made on me in my less than happy state that I am struggling to remember what it was that we did. Rosemary wanted to look for the artist on the bridge that we had visited first so we inevitably went there and did not find him. I was impressed with the total overload of Czech jewellery shops that sold garnets and amber in profusion. I suggested that Rosemary might like some memento of our stay and so we started to look at earrings. That inevitably took a long time but Rosemary did eventually find a lovely pair of garnet earrings, about a dozen stone in a circular pattern. They cost about £35 which gives some further indication of the difference in prices.
We had also decided that we wanted to dine within the splendour of the Obecni Dum. We went
there for lunch and dined in the bar downstairs. It was beautiful food and was
served in stupendous surroundings. Even in this equivalent of the best dining
place in town we were not charged more than a few pounds.
After the Obecni Dum, we went to admire the boobs and bum again: never have too much of that. Paul wanted to explore a large sports ware shop but it did not sell the golf equipment that he wanted. Then I had asked that we find the Cloister of St Agnes. We approached it from a funny direction but the entrance was only about a hundred and fifty metres from our hotel. Originally Agnes had been the sister of Wenceslas and had decided that it would be a jolly thing to be the Abbess of a Nunnery. She had been quite successful at this and jointly with Wenceslas had founded the first foundation of the Poor Clares. Agnes had to wait until 1989 to be beatified and the timing was probably not coincidental that it preceded the Velvet Revolution by a few weeks. We found that the secondary function of the Cloister of St Agnes, that of art gallery, was closed. What a surprise after our previous experience. Still it had a lovely cloister. I like cloisters: there is something of the contemplative life of the inmates that permeates the stones. I enjoyed the peace of the place and paid silent homage to Wenceslas who is buried in the chapel of the Nunnery. There seems some doubt in my books as to whether he was a king or just a Bohemian Prince. However, it is generally accepted that he was good. He was killed by his brother apparently so he did not look out all that well, at least for himself. A lot of the structure of the St Agnes Cloister had received some severe knocks over the last hundred years and has only recently been put back to something of its previous glory.
I know the final bit of the day involved our concert at St Salvador's church but that was at five o'clock so what happened to the rest of the day, I cannot recall. St Salvador's is a fine Baroque church not far from the Old Town Square. We assembled there and found our seats. Part of the interior showed that someone had done a good job of obscuring the painted decoration on the ceiling. We settled to be serenaded by yet another rather beautiful soprano who sang Ave Maria. Next to us were a local couple with a 1970s cassette recorder that was brought to the fore and used to record the performance. I cheated and recorded much of what we were hearing on the camcorder. Contrary to the derogatory comments of the Czech Government concerning the quality of some concerts that I saw in a free newspaper, the standard of this concert was very good. The quintet supplying the music were competent and the two soloists excellent. Once the delightful young lady soloist had taken her music and shopping bag away, we had a couple of solos from a gentleman with a trumpet. He played another version of Ave Maria, one Paul and Joan had had as background at their wedding. He also played some parts of the Dvorak New World that had my eyes moistening again.
Out into the sunshine with a very cosmopolitan crew. The people in front of us in the concert were a straggling middle aged peroxide blond accompanying a gentleman who looked like an overweight Greek Thug. He was so involved with the music that he went into a sort of trance: strange is the effect of beautiful music and appearance is no guide to those affected by it.
We had no fixed plans for our evening meal, and the concert was early so we headed once more to the Charles Bridge. Still no sign of the artist we were seeking. I did finally take a picture of the statue on the bridge of St John of Nepamuk. This unfortunate gentleman had been father confessor to the Queen of Wenceslas IV. When the king demanded to know what the Queen had been up to he declined to say, the sanctity of the confessional being all. So the King had the Priest dressed in armour and threw him off the bridge and, surprisingly, he did not float. The bronze under the statue shows the event and is polished with all sorts of people having touched it for luck. Not a lot of luck for poor John but he stuck to his principles and deservedly got his sainthood.
At the other side we started our quest for a restaurant that ended after about four attempts at a place which proclaimed that it was both Czech and Armenian. The gentleman serving had a nice white shirt but suffered the same heavy BO that many Czechs seem to suffer from: maybe deodorants are expensive. The meal was good and was accompanied by an excellent indigenous Cabernet Sauvignon. This, almost the most expensive wine on the menu, cost £4 a bottle. The wine tasted good and the food was excellent. We managed to finish the wine rather rapidly and so had another: at £4 a bash why not.
I led the mob in a slightly jolly state out and headed once more for the bridge from which the Jazz boat had gone. We paused on the bridge and looked at the lights of the castle high on the hill and across to the Charles Bridge. It was then that I decided that we would come back at some future time to see how they get on.
Our last morning was mainly spent in Old Town Square with a venture up the tower of the Town Hall. Surprisingly it was not possible to see the river and the views although unhindered were not as spectacular as they might have been. I enjoyed playing with the camcorder and starting with shots way out on something we had visited and then panned back to show how it connected with the Old Town Square. Paul and Joan wanted to buy some china so went off to do so. Rosemary and I pottered around the little shops in the square. I bought some interesting knickknacks that were ridiculously cheap. There were two pendants: one with a brass whistle and another with a beautifully made miniature sword. Added to these oddities was a replica crown of Charles IV made of brass and that had been struck by a gentleman with an anvil and a small forge (a forger?). His chum wore clogs and seemed fascinated with the text messaging on his new mobile phone: very historically incorrect.
At the appointed time we met Paul and Joan, had a last lingering look at the Square and made our way back the two hundred yards to our hotel. Our bags were already packed and we had booked a car so it was a simple matter to transfer ourselves and our luggage to the vehicle and off we went to the airport. That cost us the princely sum of 560 crowns which is again not bad for a lengthy journey and for all of us. We checked in and hung around and left at the appointed time.
Bags recovered at the other end we recovered the car and headed back home. I had a screaming headache made all the more appalling by the rush hour traffic on the M25. It took us half as long again to get from Heathrow to Tunbridge Wells as it took to fly from Prague to Heathrow. Prague had been a magical city of wonderful architecture, pleasant welcoming people and food and drink that was both cheap and wholesome. We will hopefully return and see how they get on in the next few years.
For those interested in the Prague trip, we are off to see the city again in November 2004. The cost, flights and hotels is £90 a head, which compares favourably with the cost of the first trip!"
