DAY ONE: February 10th, 2008; Good King Wenceslas

Wenceslas Square (which is not a square but a long wide street) is a touristy area by day, seedy by night (drunkards, prostitutes, you name it) but some pretty sites. This is a side street off of Wenceslas looking at the Henry Tower. There is a bar at the bottom and a restaurant on the 7th and 8th floor. We ate there that evening (I'll write more about that later). It is a Bell Tower along the "Royal Route". The bell is still there between the restaurant floors but I don't think they ring it anymore.

This building fascinated me because of the old architecture below with the modern addition on the top.

I liked this building just because of the slight curves and roundness it seems to have along with all the different "levels". Modern architecture is so plain and boring. Too bad that it's too time consuming and complicated and expensive to make beautiful ornate buildings like they have in Prague (and most of Europe). It would make for a more beautiful place to live.

This building was amazing! The whole thing was frescoed (Painted with images)! It was a beautiful building already but add the artwork of the fresco (even tho they were faded; which does make me wonder how often they have to do restoration on it so they don't lose it completely) and it's a piece of art.

In Prague most buildings are watching you. A little history lesson: most of the statues are images of gods and heroes/heroines to help protect the family that lives there. But there are also the statues of what looks like cherubs but if you look closely these "cherubs" have horns so there are images of demons and "scary" things also to help convince the ghosts or evil spirits that might be floating by that the building is already occupied with evil spirits and demons.

Always being watched. I love this picture. As the guy in the middle is watching all of us down on the street so is he being watched by the big stone guy to the right. The stone guy the left is watching the same thing the guy in the middle is looking at.

This made me think of Lord of the Rings.

This is NOT the same Budweiser we have here in the states. This Budweiser is actually good beer (a dark amber beer) and made in the town of Budweis. As the Czechs say "how can America have a beer call Budweiser when it's not made in Budweis??" Good question! So American Budweiser is called something totally different in Europe ("Bud") and the Czech Budweiser is called something different here in America ("Czechvar").

The man on the horse is sv Vaclav (St. Wenceslas of "Good King Wenceslas" Christmas Carol fame - but he never was a king...but apparently he was a good man). At the foot of the statue is a little modest plague which is "The Memorial to the Victims of Communism". This area is where most of the protests happened before the Velvet Revolution happened. Behind Wenceslas is the National Museum (which is most like our Natural History Museums here). It houses mostly pre-history stuff: stone tools, clay pots etc..., paleontology (some human but mostly animal, and lots and lots of rocks and minerals. There were a few things that were translated into English but for the most part it was all in Czech. Our favorite exhibit seemed to be one on feet. (More on that later).

This is the view from the steps of the National Museum looking down Wenceslas Square.

This was my first "Tourist" shot of my trip. Me standing in Wenceslas Square with the Statue of Wenceslas and the National Museum behind me. Yay! Wenceslas Square is now mostly casinos, high priced hotels and restaurants, shopping establishments (mostly for tourists), several "cabaret" shows and many black light theatres (which was an interesting experience let me tell you...it's theatre in the black light with a touch of Cirque, and a hint of the Muppets. Very strange indeed.