Lesce Day 2 or Triglav Adventure Tour – Part 3 (August 15, 2012)

This was a very long day so we are breaking it into three parts – this is part three of three.

Eventually, we were all settled in and we headed off.  Everyone was talking about how great it was and our group was definitely feeling increased camaraderie.   Our next stop was just a short drive away but I can’t remember where it was.  We had a bit of hike, so we put on our shoes and socks.  We walked along a dirt road, then partway down a valley, where we crossed a wooden swinging bridge.  One man from the other van refused to cross it.  It wasn’t really surprising as you could feel the effects of every step on the bridge or gust of wind and the river was a long way down.

We continued down the valley and walked along the river bed.  In the spring, the river is much, much higher.  There were bridges built to cross the river then that were wholly unnecessary now.  We kept walking until we found ourselves in a very large cave like space with a huge (for Slovenia) waterfall, the Kozjak Waterfall.  We went up on the viewing platform to get a better view and then we backtracked a bit, removed our shoes and socks and waded in towards the waterfall pool.  The water was shockingly cold.  We were told it was five degrees (about forty degrees Fahrenheit) and it felt it.  When we got to the pool we threw ourselves in before we could change our minds and swam to the waterfall.  We didn’t linger long before swimming back to the rocks.

That’s us behind the waterfall.

Luca hustled us back into the van away we went to our last stop in Triglav National Park, a bridge over the Soca River.  Here from a height of 12 meters (about 40 feet) we could jump into the river.   So we did.  We even have photos (see below).  You’ll have to take my word for it that those blurs are us.  It was perhaps my favorite part of the day.  You had to be careful though.  If you hit the water with anything other than your feet, you could end up with some nasty bruises.  Fortunately, Ralph and I fared well.

[Lynnae looks pretty happy as I plunge to an uncertain river bottom.]

Lynnae jumps.  You can see me in the bottom left corner.]

[This part of the tour wasn’t anything I was particularly anticipating.  As I edged onto the platform, Luca told me “just don’t look,” which is great advice.  I stepped off the platform and almost immediately jammed my eyes shut.  I did this to ensure I didn’t lose my contact lenses (I didn’t).  Unfortunately I don’t even remember the two or three seconds it must have taken me to fall, I only remember realizing I was several feet underwater in the river, and still alive.  I happily surfaced and swam to the side of the river to tread water and watch Lynnae jump.]

Luca told us it was time to go.  We needed to hurry because we didn’t want to miss our train, the last one of the night.  One of the girls in our van insisted on jumping again because it hadn’t been captured on camera the first time.  Luca said no but she jumped anyway.   We did make it to the train in time but we didn’t really have any time to spare.  It was a car train.  I’d never heard of such a thing but you drive your car onto the flatbed railcar, park it, and the train takes off. 

[This runs several times a day.  The reason it exists is because it is much faster to take the car train from one valley to the next, than to drive all the way around the mountain.  The car train we took was the last one of the day, which is why Luca was so insistent we hurry.]

While Luca parked, we had time to change into our dry clothes.  I was also able to experience a very interesting bathroom.  One room – no stalls.  I walk in, close and lock the door, turn around and… there’s no toilet.  That’s maybe not a fair statement; there was nothing I immediately recognized as a toilet.  Instead there was an elongated toilet bowl insert in the floor.  On either side were porcelain treads on the floor.  So I guess it was a female urinal of sorts.  It was definitely a different experience.  At least it seemed clean and I didn’t have to pay to use it.  (Years ago in Italy, my first pay toilet experience was similar but worse.  There were stalls without doors, a hole on the ground to squat over and rope to support yourself if necessary.  To think I paid for the privilege!)

We milled around the car talking amongst ourselves.  Luca briefly disappeared, then came back with Laskos for us all.  We got back in the car as the train started.  It was interesting and kind of nice to be both in a car and on a train.  The weather was nice and the scenery good.  We had the windows down and the sliding door open except for when we went through long tunnels (because of the smell).  I saw a family of deer.  It was very relaxing after all the activity of the day.

We also passed through Slovenia’s longest tunnel.  It’s about 6.4 kilometers and took quite a while to go through.  I guess I had thought the train was moving faster than it actually was.  The second longest tunnel in Slovenia is actually longer but part of the tunnel is in Austria and the Slovenian portion of that tunnel is shorter than this one.

When Luca drove the car off the train, I thought the tour was over and we were headed back but we had one more stop.  We stopped to see Lake Bohinj, the largest natural lake in Slovenia.  It was very beautiful.  It lacked an island and a castle but I think I preferred it to touristy Bled.  I’m sure Guide One told a story at this point but I can no longer remember it.  I do remember we ate delicious cheese samples from a street vendor on our way out.

We were the last people Luca dropped off.  He was going to take us back to our hotel but we felt we’d exhausted the dining options in Lesce so we asked him for recommendations and to be dropped off in Bled. [Additionally, “the jam” going from Bled to Lesce was pretty severe and we didn’t want to put him through driving us all that way in bumper-to-bumper traffic, only to turn around and return to Bled.] We wandered around for a while and eventually decided on a rooftop pizzeria for dinner.  Our table was a converted Singer sewing machine.  We split a decent pizza, walked back to Lesce and called it a night.

Lesce Day 2 or Triglav Adventure Tour – Part 2 (August 15, 2012)

This was a very long day so we are breaking it into three parts – this is part two of three.

Immediately after lunch was one of the highlights of the day, optional whitewater rafting.  Of course, we had opted in.  We put on our “swimming costumes” and then our wetsuits (mine was a child size 😦 wetsuit). [It was adult-sized. Lynnae is just unhappy that it was a different color design than the rest of the group, and instead resembled wetsuits worn by children in a different rafting group] and helmets and met our navigator.  This was not Luca.  Luca and Guide One were able to relax without us for a while, as everyone had opted in.  Our raft was composed of our van members.

[Brief interlude on the “swimming costumes.”  Luca and Guide One/Mr. Pink both spoke excellent English, which is good since our van was composed of 7/8ths native English speakers.  However, some of their vocabulary just seemed odd to American ears.  I know swimsuits are known as swimming costumes in some English-speaking areas, even though it makes me think of clowns on the beach.  But when Luca kept referring to car traffic as “the jam” – as in, “Oh no, the jam, we will be late” – it reminded me that not all colloquialisms are created equal.]

After a relatively brief safety briefing we got in the raft and shoved off.  Almost immediately, we grounded ourselves on a rock.  (The river does get pretty low in the summer.)  After some rocking back and forth and jumping up and down we finally freed ourselves and continued on our way, when we steered directly into another large rock.  Our guide steered us into calm water and used this opportunity to remind us that we need to follow his instructions exactly and we cannot paddle like “little girls” but must paddle like “strong men.”  In spite of these remarks, he was overall pretty agreeable.

We took advantage of this calm water to get out and practice getting in and helping others in.  The water was quite cold. [The wetsuits helped to a point, but the wetsuits resembled bib overalls – so when the water was up to chest-level, it got inside the wetsuit and the suit wasn’t too useful .]  We went through a series of small rapids without much incident.  The navigator had said one of his rules was we could not be quiet in his boat so the family began singing a river song in parts.  They were pretty good.

We stopped at a very large boulder in the river.  A couple other rafts from the same company were also there.   They flipped one of the rafts and laid it down over the side of the boulder.  Then after we scrambled up the rock, we could use it as a slide and slide or bounce down into the water.  It was lots of fun.  We probably stayed 20 or 30 minutes.  The water was just as cold here as it was upriver.

We went through some more minor rapids and stopped where a mountain spring was joining the river.  We were told that this water was suitable for drinking, so everyone got out to try it.  Call me paranoid but I went a little upstream to be beyond all the others.

We all clambered back into our raft.  Our navigator told us that the easy part of the river was behind us and the dangerous portion was ahead.  Now we absolutely had to immediately and forcefully carry out his instructions.  He had us do a few practice strokes and then we switched around a couple of people.  This balanced out the force of our paddling and put a more experienced and forceful person in one of the front positions.

You could feel that the current was much more powerful here.  We were going much faster, through more rapids, with more large rocks as obstacles.  It was also much more fun and exhilarating.

[I was on the front right of the raft, so numerous times I had to dodge my head to the left to avoid conking on a rock.  It also meant my views were unobstructed.]

After the dangers were over, our navigator told us we could swim to the end if we wanted but we had to follow the raft exactly or it would be dangerous.  Once again, we all opted in.  We got out and started swimming behind the raft to the little beach. 

Luca was waiting for us.  We gathered the gear, picked up the raft and carried it up to a parking lot.  Luca hurried us along as we removed our wetsuits and toweled off.  Apparently, we were a little behind schedule.  He had placed foam over the seats in the van so we didn’t have to worry about getting the van wet.  We just needed to PLEASE GET IN THE CAR.

Lesce Day 2 or Triglav Adventure Tour – Part 1 (August 15, 2012)

This was a very long day, so we are breaking it up into three posts.

Lynnae again – We woke up early, checked our gear, and went downstairs for breakfast.  Luca, our 3glav guide, picked up us promptly in a large white van.  All the seats in the back were full so Ralph and I shared a bench seat in the front next to Luca.  It’s a good thing we don’t mind being close.  The spot did mean we had the advantage of being able to see the views forward and sideways.  Unfortunately, it also meant that we spent the first fifteen minutes of our drive poring over the audio guidebook trying the fix the radio.  [The van had just returned from the mechanic, and it was displaying an error message.  It did not seem promising to me that the guide’s most pressing issue right after he picked us up was fixing his radio.]  Ultimately we were unsuccessful, we needed the vehicles unique radio code and it was not listed in the manual.

Luca narrated portions of his drive with factoids about the history of Slovenia as a whole and this region in particular.  He shared a lot of interesting information.  I wish I remembered more of it.

Our first stop was in Kranjska Gora.  We stopped at a small pool just off the River Pisnic that flowed through a wasteland of white rock fragments.  In front of the pool was a statue of a goat named Zlatorog or Goldhorn.  Legend has it Zlatorog was guardian of these lands long ago when they were the most beautiful meadows imaginable.  Also, his golden horns were the key to a treasure hidden in the mountains.  In a neighboring valley lived a hunter who had fallen in love with a village girl.  She was unimpressed with him.  He decided that he was going to prove his might and win riches by killing the goat.  He was sure these would win her favor.  High up on the mountain the boy got close enough, and shot Zlatorog.  As the goat lay dying, flowers sprang from the ground where his blood fell.   Zlatorog ate the flowers and was healed, revived and revitalized.  He grew to be stronger than he was before.  Before the hunter realized what was happening, the goat charged the boy and butted him over the ledge to his death.  However, Zlatorog was very angry so he left and he took the perfect meadows with him, leaving only wastelands behind.

It was at this stop we realized that our van was only half of the group.  Another van was driven by Guide One, the man who did most of the storytelling.  [He had a name, which he did share with us.  Unfortunately neither of us remember his name, hence the title.  If you so desire, when reading, replace “Guide One” with “Mr. Pink.”]  We did get to know a couple members of that van over the course of the trip but obviously we were more familiar with the passengers from our van, a British couple with their three teenaged daughters, and an Italian man traveling alone.

The whole group in front of the goat

 wastelands

Next we drove up the mountain to Vrsic Pass, a mere 1611 meters above sea level, and the highest mountain pass in Slovenia.  The road from the bottom to the top is only about 9km so naturally the road is quite steep [Kranjska Gora, the city where we started, is at an elevation of about 811 meters above sea level].  On the side we drove up, there are 24 hairpin turns.  They are numbered and signed with elevation data.  The turns are also cobblestoned.  The entire road was initially constructed this way during WWI to supply the front.  Russian POWs constructed the road using only hand tools in less than a year.   It was able to be completed so quickly because all portions of the road were worked on simultaneously.  Many Russians lost their lives in an avalanche and many others to the elements.  There are two Russian graveyards beside the road as well as a Russian Chapel to memorialize them.  In 2006, the road was renamed Russian Road (Ruska cesta) to further remember their work and their lives.  Putin visited the site during his official visit to Slovenia.   So the turns are also left as cobblestones to recall the road’s history.

Ruska cesta

Vrsic Pass was chilly in the morning.  It was also packed with people.  Apparently, the day was a national holiday so lots of people were out and about.  However, the views were awesome.

The views

We hiked up the smallest mountain nearby for about twenty minutes.  We stopped at an abandoned building that had been used to transport supplies by cable [during World War I].  We were then directed to the rockface of the mountain in front of us, to the “Giant Girl in the Mountain” or the “Pagan Girl.”  According to legend, this girl was one of many fairies that could and would occasionally foretell the future of infants.  The Pagan Girl had gone one morning to see a male infant and she had stated that he would grow to become a mighty hunter who would shoot the goat Zlatorog for his valuable horns.  The other fairies were so angry with her, they put her in the mountain for all eternity and still today you can see her weeping.

[In yesterday’s post I mentioned that the dragon is featured on cans and bottles of Union brand beer.  The other main Slovenian beer, Lasko, prominently displays the Zlatorog.  Lasko is like a weaker version of Bud Light.]

The Pagan Girl

We hiked back down to the vans and took off again.  We headed down the backside of the mountain (26 hairpin turns) to our next stop – the source of the Soca River.   A short, steep hike and we were there.

At the source of the Soca River

Our road followed the Soca River and we could see it widen and become increasingly green (due to the minerals in the rocks).  We stopped here to take and look and see some popular recreational options.

Right after this photo she fell – but she was the best of the people doing it

Then it was time for lunch.  Good thing too because we were hungry.  Ralph and I had resolved to go the Mercator for our lunch.  [Mercator appears to be the dominant grocery chain in Slovenia, because there is at least one location in every little town.  I’m not sure if Mercator means ‘market’ or if the founders were just geography buffs.]  It was pointed out to us on the drive into town, as well as the bakery and one restaurant.  However, the Mercator was closed for the holiday.  So instead we went to the bakery.  Ralph bought a hot dog stuck on a pastry and I had a pizza inside a pastry and some perfectly ripe raspberries.  It was an interesting lunch.

Transit to Lesce and Lesce Day 1 (August 14, 2012)

Lynnae here – Tuesday we ate an early-ish breakfast at the hotel and checked out.  We walked through the heavily graffitied outskirts of Ljubljana to the train station and grabbed a train to Lesce.  Lesce is only 3 miles or so from the tourist destination Bled but accommodations are only a tiny fraction of what they are in Bled.  We checked into our new hotel, got settled and walked towards Bled.  At first, it seemed we were going to have to walk on the street the whole way there but after a few blocks or so there was a bike/walking path not far from the road.  The walk was pretty nice and fortunately a significant portion of it was shaded.

Once we arrived in Bled, we confirmed our tour for the following day with Triglav Adventures.  We were given an enthusiastic sales spiel despite having already purchased the tour online.  We confirmed our address and pick-up time and went on our way.

Bled was packed.  It was full of tourists and traffic but the lake was pretty and the castle above the lake was picturesque. [Though some towns near Bled depend upon skiing for the majority of their tourism, summer is the high tourist season in Bled.  It is a great place for wealthy Europeans to sit around the lake and demonstrate to each other how wealthy and European they are.]  We walked around for a while enjoying the scenery.  We obtained an almost decent map from the tourist center but all we really needed to remember was where the main road was in relation to us.

We found a place that had a decent deal on bicycle rental.  We rented a couple and rode back to Lesce.  The ride back was understandably much shorter than the walk however the uphill climb was a little brutal.  Lesce and Bled are on opposing hilltops so half the ride was great and half was hard work.

We cleaned up back at the hotel and decided on a restaurant for supper.  It wasn’t difficult as Lesce only has five options and two of them were poorly reviewed.  We shared an Italian combo meal for two that was very filling and drank Union, our first Slovenian beer.

We walked back to the hotel and prepared Ralph’s pack for our Adventure Tour the following day.

[Lynnae did not mention that our hotel also was in a scenic location, surrounded by a gas station, two car dealerships, and a “Hofer” (ALDI) grocery store.  [And of course the mountains!]  It was the middle-class American alternative to staying in Bled.]

Ljubljana Day 1 (August 13, 2012)

Ralph again.  This day was my 28^th birthday.  Breakfast at our hotel in Ljubljana was quite filling, and because we had slept in a bit we caught it at the very end of their open hours.  We knew the hotel staff meant business when they started taking away the food from the buffet at 10am precisely, and I resolved to get to breakfast earlier the next day.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the Slovenian capital is quite small.  It took us less than five hours to see the entirety of the city’s attractions, which consist primarily of bridges over their creek-width river, and the castle in the cliffs above the city.

some Slovenian government office

unlike in Germany, where water fountains were impossible to find and all restrooms required a fee, the good Slovenians offered their tap water and restrooms [when you could find them] for free

First off, the bridges:

Dragon Bridge.  The dragon is the symbol of Ljubljana and is on the logo of Union beer, one of the two Slovenian beers we saw offered everywhere in the country

the river through the middle of the city

On Tripadvisor, this is referred to as the “Love Bridge.”  Note the same padlock theme that we saw in Cologne, Germany.  However, the local name is the Butcher’s Bridge, as suggested by the next photo

The three bridges that comprise the “Triple Bridge.”  Originally just the middle bridge existed, then they added two bridges on its flank for pedestrian traffic.  This is the biggest attraction in Ljubljana, and it is pretty much what you’d expect.

streets of Ljubljana

For lunch we ate an outdoor café, which turned out to be a mistake.  I had a bowl of “traditional Slovenian” chicken stew, which promptly delivered my immune system its birthday gift of food poisoning with a side of nausea.  Unaware of the bio-bomb brewing in my gut, we began the long, steep trek uphill to Ljubljana Castle.  Before long I was weak and feverish, and I was having a very difficult time with the walk uphill.  Eventually Lynnae convinced me that I wasn’t just physically deconditioned but perhaps was suffering ill effects from the chicken stew.

Once we got to the castle, it was fairly underwhelming.  It had a good view of the city, though:

And their castle tower, with the Ljubljana city flag, is both highly meta and reminiscent of Super Mario Bros:

castle complex

While at the castle, Lynnae started to get sick with the same symptoms I had exhibited.  Thankfully she only had about 5% of the soup, while I had gobbled the vast majority, so she was not sick for very long, though her symptoms were just as severe.  When we both felt well enough to walk back downhill, we left the castle to visit one of Ljulbljana’s museums.  Unfortunately, a lot of museums in Europe (and apparently all in Slovenia) are closed on Mondays, so no dice.  We went back to our hotel, happy that we had decided to only stay in Ljubljana for one full day anyways.

[It’s possible that our symptoms colored our opinions of Ljubljana.  Also, we did not pay the entry fee for the castle’s one exhibit.  It may have been interesting but we weren’t interested at the time.  We did enjoy walking around in Old Town and there was a chocolatier that was giving out scrumptious samples.  Also, there was a large market just across the triple bridge – and the Butcher’s bridge (the bridges are all pretty close together) that was pretty interesting.  It had everything from produce and flowers to trinkets and clothing.]

Transit to Ljubljana (August 12, 2012)

Ralph here.  I woke up fairly early and ran from our hotel back to the Metronome.  In addition to serving as an ironic commentary on five-year plans, the Metronome is surrounded by a large park which is likely the only large, flat area in Prague.  I added a few miles in the paths of this tree-shaded park, along with a few Czech runners.  Upon my return, we ate breakfast, checked out of the hotel, and walked (downhill!) to the train station for our first European rail journey to Ljulbljana, the capital of Slovenia.

When we purchased the tickets a couple days earlier at the train station [from the angriest czech we met], we learned the difference between purchasing a ‘ticket’ and a ‘reservation.’  The former just allows you onto the train, the latter “reserves” (makes sense!) a seat.  If you do not purchase a reservation, then you just need to hope that not all the reservations are purchased, so you can then sit down in an actual chair rather than hanging out in the train passageway like a particularly committed panhandler.

We boarded the train and sat down at what we thought were our reserved seats.  We learned otherwise when the actual reservation-holders showed up.  Another traveler showed us on our ticket how we could find our reserved seats (they were in the next railcar) and we headed out of the compartment.

After jostling our way down the moving train passageway with our baggage, tripping over numerous non-reservation-holding Eurokids spending their summer backpacking across the Continent, we made it to our seats.  Unfortunately, they were in adjacent compartments.  Oh well, at least we had seats, unlike the free spirits in the hall.

Our first train was from Prague to Vienna, where we had a 45 minute layover and bought a pizza from a crowded train station restaurant.  We then boarded our second train, which was much less crowded, had more comfortable seats, and even had a power outlet in the compartment.  [Best train of the day – the seats reclined without taking up additional space and there were jump seats in the hallway in addition to things Ralph mentioned.]  Also, Lynnae and I were in the same compartment.  Lynnae was exhausted, and slept through some picture-perfect scenery as we wound through the Austrian mountains.  Unfortunately, I did not take any photos so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

We got off our second train at Maribor, Slovenia.  We had been concerned about the 7-minute layover before our last train departed Maribor, but no need to worry – our last train was already sitting just across the platform.

The last train took off for the approximately hour long trip to the Slovenian capital.  This train was by far the best of them all.  There were no compartments, but two sets of two seats faced each other with a table in between.  The train was nearly empty except for a large party of Indian people playing cards right behind us.

When the conductor came by to check our tickets, he asked for our reservation.  We did not have a reservation for this leg of the trip, and didn’t think it was an issue as the train was about 10% full.  The conductor’s English was very limited, and my Slovenian ability consists of me speaking English loudly and slowly, so it was not easy communication.  Still, we could understand that he was asking for money for two reservations.  We didn’t have enough cash for two reservations, so he just took what few euros we had and issued us one reservation.  In sum: we got shook down by a Slovenian Railways conductor.

We arrived in Ljubljana (pronounced lube-yana) around 9:40pm.  Thankfully the rail station information office closed at 10, so we headed there to get brochures and a city map.  Slovenia is a small country both physically and in population, with only 2 million people total.  As Slovenia’s largest city, Ljubljana only has a population of 272,000, about equivalent to Fort Wayne, Indiana, with a similarly-sized downtown.  As such, all we had to do was tell the clerk our hotel name and he was immediately able to point it out on the map.  We wandered the darkened streets for a bit and eventually stumbled our way onto the hotel.  [This also means that all hotels have their own directional signs]

[And some photos of beautiful Prague that we didn’t have reason to include earlier.]

Prague Day 5 (August 11, 2012)

Lynnae again – We slept in (on our twin beds – I felt like we were on a fifties sitcom) and went down to breakfast at our hotel.  We walked through Wenceslas Square [Ralph: not really a square, more like a long boulevard) to the Museum of Communism.  It’s located above a McDonald’s and next to a casino.  The admission prices were a little steep but the information was good.  It gave the history of communism in Prague and illustrated what life was like under communism.   It also included an exhibit about North Korea.

(Wenceslas Square)

(Posters advertising the Museum of Communism)

Next we walked through Old Town and the Jewish Quarter.  We were planning to go the Jewish Museum.  We were surprised to find it closed until we realized it was Saturday.  Oops!  We did peek into the old Jewish Cemetery where thousands possibly a hundred thousand Jews were buried.  They were not allotted any additional space so they added more soil and layered the graves.  (That’s why the gravestones are so close together.)

(In Jewish Quarter. Note the ‘normal’ clock on top, and the Hebrew lettering clock below it.  The Hebrew clock hands move “counterclockwise” and the long hand is the hour hand, not the minute hand.)

(Synagogue)

(Statue of Kafka)

We looked at other sightseeing options but weren’t feeling very enthused about any of them.  So instead, we wandered through Old Town.  I bought a delicious pastry and we enjoyed the people and the sights.

We decided to eat back at Matylda’s again; cheap, convenient and completely delicious.  We headed back to the hotel and packed up.

Ralph’s Beard

Lynnae here – While on vacation Ralph has grown a beard.  We cannot agree on what we think of it so we’re soliciting your opinions.  Please vote below and feel free to leave comments.  Thank you!  (This has been posted with the express permission of Ralph.)

Beardless photos

Bearded photos – You can’t tell from these photos but the beard is red in sunlight.

Prague Day 4 (August 10 2012)

Lynnae here – We woke up early Friday morning and ran down to the Charles Bridge.  The run there was easy because of course we were running entirely downhill.  The Bridge was pretty neat early in the morning.  It was mostly deserted so we had unblocked views of all the statues along the bridge. [The Charles Bridge during the main part of the day is jam-packed with tourists, street vendors, and pickpockets.  But in the morning it’s pretty nice.  If you go to Prague I recommend getting to the Charles Bridge by 8am to beat the crowds – by 8:45am it was really starting to fill up.]  We don’t have any photos of this because we didn’t want to take the camera on our run.  We ran back along the river to a park where Ralph did some exercises and I stretched.  Then we made our way back up the hill.  We got back to our hotel ate breakfast and packed up our belongings.  We moved two doors down.  It was too early to check-in so we left our luggage with the hotel and walked back downtown to Old Town.

We bought lunch at street stands – bread and raspberries for about three bucks.  Yum!  Then we met up with Marek, owner/operator of the World War II in Prague walking tour.  The tour was fantastic.  We saw key locations during the occupation of Prague and walked through the Jewish Quarter (Although the Jewish people never really returned to Prague, the quarter has been preserved to commemorate  the Jewish people that lived there.).  Marek took us underneath the city to the Old City where the rebels were headquartered and told us the details of the Prague Assassination of the “Butcher of Prague”, Reinhard Heydrich.  He also touched on Prague under communism.  It was an excellent tour.  Marek was full of great information and he presented it well.  He was a little hard to understand at first but he spoke English very well, including colloquialisms, no doubt due to his year in Milwaukee. [By “very well,” Lynnae means that his syntax and vocabulary were extensive.  However, I think his accent was hard to understand at first and he did not have a lot of English voice inflection, which made it harder for me to understand him.]   It was fascinating to hear some of the same stories told from a different perspective.

(We walked through that door behind the happy couple to get to the old underground city.  We saw a huge number of brides and grooms getting photos taken throughout the city.)

(Down in the old city)

After the tour, we paid Marek and walked across the river and up to the Metronome. [On his website, he says “pay only if you like the tour,” which is true; he didn’t ask for the fee until the end of the tour.  I hope he doesn’t get stiffed on the tour fees often.]  It’s a very large functional metronome that was erected in 1991 on the slab that used to hold an enormous statue of Stalin.  The Metronome itself was not that impressive but it was a very impressive view of the city.  The immediate surrounding area has become a skate park.  After taking in the view for a while – we climbed down and then up to our new hotel and checked in.   It felt like we were continually climbing stairs or walking steep streets while in the city.

(Metronome from a distance)

(Closer view)

(The ‘Before’ Photo, stolen from the Internet)

(Ralph figuring out which buildings were which)

(The views)

After settling in we walked a few blocks to the restaurant Mlsnej Kocour, where we enjoyed a delicious meal and lingered over our food.  I absolutely loved eating in Prague; the food was so good and so inexpensive.  We ordered Czech Brie as an appetizer (spiced Brie with peppers and onions), Ralph had wild boar with dumplings and I had veal and we had dessert pancakes with cream and strawberries all for less than $35 including tip.  It was something I could have gotten used to very easily.  After our long dinner we went back to the hotel and turned in for the night.

Prague Day 3 (August 9 2012)

Ralph again.  This morning I was feeling somewhat less sick, so I went for a five-mile run up to the base of Prague Castle and back.  After we ate breakfast, we headed toward the Franz Kafka Museum on the banks of the Vtalva River.  But first we stopped at the McDonald’s “McCafe” across the street from the hotel, which was more high-class than any coffee shop I’ve seen:

While Kafka wrote in German, he was a Czech Jew who had a deep, if somewhat unrequited, affinity for Prague.  After his death and the rise of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, academic study of Kafka literature was prohibited, presumably because the tone of mistrust of authority and of the absurdity of bureaucratic systems – two topics that were not well received in Eastern Bloc countries.  Of course, now that Prague is capitalist and a tourist destination as well, there is a minor industry around Kafka tourism.

The museum is fairly small but does a good job of explaining Kafka’s life circumstances and work.  The museum is mostly dark, with exhibits lit in a manner that throws shadows across the floor and wall.  The basement partly consists of a long corridor with false file cabinet drawers from floor to ceiling, each with a cabinet label of one of Kafka’s family, associates, or characters (admittedly, the names are re-used several times over).  A few of the “drawers” are open and are part of the exhibit.

Photography was prohibited inside the museum, so this is the outside.

After completing the Kafka Museum, we headed back to Prague Castle to see the rest of the exhibits that we missed the previous day (When you buy a combo ticket at Prague Castle, you can see each exhibit on the ticket only once, but you get two days for them all) [making the audioguides even more ridiculously priced.  They know you can’t go through it all in three hours.]  First came the Old Palace:

Then the Gentlewoman’s Building:

The last museum on the combo ticket was the Castle Gallery, which mostly consisted of portraits.  Again, no photography allowed, but we went through it pretty quickly anyways.

After lunch we went into Prague’s Old Town square.  We knew we were nearing Old Town when the combined gravitational pull of all the other tourists made it impossible for us to resist.  The square is just about what you might guess: a large square with old-city pavers, a big Gothic cathedral, an indistinguishable statue, and a police van with a sign that says “DO NOT CHANGE MONEY WITH PEOPLE ON THE STREET.”  The sign was in several languages but only in big print in English.  I suppose it’s especially a problem with American and British tourists getting ripped off on the exchange rate.  Curiously, the police van also had a water bowl inside for people to water their dogs.

The biggest draw of the Old Town square was the Astronomical Clock which is the oldest of its kind in Europe and the only one still functioning.  Legend is that the creator was blinded after making it to prevent him making another.  Who knows.

At this point, we had one remaining night in our Prague hotel, but we wanted to stay some more in Prague.  Two more days, we decided.  The current hotel did not have any availability for us (the next day we saw a very large tour group checking in, so it makes sense) so we made arrangements to move about 100 feet down the street to new lodgings for two days.

For dinner, we celebrated cultural hegemony by eating dinner at the McDonald’s we had patronized earlier in the day for coffee.  Even though most restaurant meals are much less expensive in Prague than a comparable meal in the US, fast food is an exception.  The price of our meal was very close to what you would find in the US and, because of language issues, we ended up ordering more than we expected.  [Eating at McDonald’s made us appreciate even more all the inexpensive, delicious Czech food we’ve been eating.]  With another European cultural experience in the bag, we finished the day.

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