Prague Castle District - June 4

Hi All,

Today was a day for the Royals ;) Anna and I spent basically the entire day at up in the Prague Castle District area of town. We started our morning off with breakfast at a cafe down the street from the meeting place for the Royal Walk Castle Tour, enjoying the sunshine. That is, we were enjoying the sunshine until Anna got shit on by a pigeon! haha so she had a little bit of a rough morning. Thankfully we had both finished eating by this point and Anna had some really good coffee at the cafe. 

Our castle tour was 11-2pm and then we stayed up there for about another hour or so enjoying the beautiful views from one of the highest points that overlooks the town before heading to Lesser town for the rest of the day. Fun fact, while its called Prague Castle, its really a district comprising of over 70,000 m2 of land and royal buildings. Our journey to the castle started with a short tram ride up to one of the highest places and then we essentially went downhill (geographically of course) from there the rest of the tour. So a few phrases from our guide that made me chuckle as we traveled, "Gotta use the Zebra" (the crosswalk) and "Don't get killed, we have a zero death policy. Bad for Trip Advisor if someone gets killed!" lol the truth of this last statement just makes it more funny in my opinion. 

A few notes from our castle tour and guide that I'll pass on to any future Prague travelers. The Strahov Monastery has a lot of interesting history and is worth learning about by doing a tour with a guide that shows you around the entire castle district, but you have to usually pay separately to enter and its not cheap, plus you can barely go in. It was described as basically you pay to stand at the entrance and look in. Better option is to google for images of the beauty, plus half the books aren’t in view of the area because they are in the treasury and you can’t get near the books as a visitor. We didn’t purchase any extra tickets to view anything additional while on the castle but we were still able to see a great deal from the exterior and St. Vitus Cathedral we were able to walk into part of without purchasing a ticket. Surprisingly, this cathedral took over 600 years from start to finish, contains the 4th largest bell in Europe (in the bell tower), and is one of the largest examples of gothic style churches and the one of the largest Catholic Cathedral ever. One of the main architects took a lot of his inspiration from Norte Dame and contains the classic gargoyles as water spouts on the pillars. Also, according to our guide the food is mostly overpriced and the restaurants aren’t very good. For this reason, Anna and I simply went into Lesser town at the base of the castle district and eat down there. 

Stairs down to town

A view of the streets of Lesser Town

Some fun stories from the tour include:

Matters Gate which depicts an inscription that can be translated to “Matthias, King of Bohemia, [years], asshole.” For this king was not known to be the best to his people. He commissioned Spanish workers to create this gate and refused to give extra money or time beyond the initial quote. Therefore, the workers got their little bit of revenge by spelling the Spanish “ano” (meaning ass) not “año” (year in Spanish), nor Czech “anno” meaning year. The workers were able to claim the second ’n’ just didn’t fit when later asked why they misspelled the word, but it sounds like it was probably purposeful since there was a reason for it to be. 

Funny examples of how relaxed “security” is around Czech monuments and President. The funny story is about a political activist that decided to protest President Zeman by replacing the President Flag in the courtyard of Prague Castle with a giant pair of red boxers that flapped away up there for hours. It took around 5 hours before someone from security felt like taking them down! If this doesn’t show how relaxed the government guards are, then let me share the fact that the President works daily in a building that tourists are allowed to walk completely around (and maybe even go in, didn’t check it out), without going through ANY security! If you want to see something even more shocking, google “Czech President Klaus shot” (it was plastic bullets, but still surprising that not only was no action by the “bodyguards” but no punishment or fine was imposed after this demonstration. A little about politics and why many of the people of Czech don’t like Zeman may be because there is such things as the “Zeman flu” that workers now use as a reason to call in “sick” to work when they are so drunk that by the next morning they may be more drunk than hangover since you’re staggering around still the next morning. This term came about following Zeman’s inauguration when he was drunk (papers called it the “flu” the next morning); its on youtube though, so feel free to make your own judgement. 

The Prague Castle District also holds the world’s 2nd largest toy museum, which holds the largest collection of barbies apparently. In order to “Celebrate Youth” the artist in charge of decorating the area added a statue of a young naked man. From the states where this does not exist, I find the irony of the statue standing literally outside of the toy museum entertaining. (viewer discretion advised—> the communist regime deemed the statue too vulgar) 

As Anna and I wondered around for a dinner destination we were once again gifted with some wonderful views of Charles bridge and got up close and personal with swans that were being fed along the river. This was probably my favorite part of a statue on the Charles bridge because the shining part of the statue (part passers by like the most) is the dog.