Praha - Old City

Praha - Old City

Going to Prague and not see the Astronomy Clock is like going to Amsterdam and miss both the channels and the red light district.

Astronomy clock

The Astronomy Clock shows every detail of time, date and stars and is so complicated you won't ever find out what time it is. It would even be difficult to see it's a full hour, if it didn't have a special feature. Every hour, Death rings a bell and then some doors open to show the Twelve Apostles.

Of course, the main sight is not the clock itself, but all the people looking at it.

The Old city has a lot of nice buildings, both from the Middle Ages as a lot of Jugendstil from the beginning of the 20th century. One of the most famous examples of the latter is the Representation House, where you can attend a concert.

Christmas decorations (in glass)

Jugendstil

	But this is not the only place for concerts, those "Greatest hits Classical" concerts are almost anywhere. And they all have the same program: Bach, Mozart, Vivaldi and of course the Czechs Dvořák and Smetana. Too bad they also play Strauss' annoying Blue Danube; we really hate that. And in real life it's green.
And there are a lot of bars and restaurants and souvenir shops to accommodate the tourists. Most souvenir shops sell Czech glass objects, Matrusjka dolls and the inevitable T-shirts with texts like "Czech me out" (are they glad it isn't Czecho-Slovakia anymore). But if you look really hard, you might find something worth buying.

Rasta tourist

Aquarel painting nr 13

The most typical Prague souvenir you can buy are the handmade (yeah right) aquarelle paintings of Prague, like the ones on the pictures above. You won't find them in the souvenir shops, but every street vendor, especially on the Karlův Most, has them. And they all sell the same set of pictures.
	With warm weather is is nice to walk by the river Vltava, or let a sailor talk you into a boat trip.

80,000 dead

One of the synagogues shows the names of about 80,000 people, but they are the ones killed in WWII. Nowadays, there almost live no Jews in the Czech Republic.

From the Middle Ages up to World War II a lot of Jews lived in Prague. They had their own quarter with several synagogues and also a cemetery. As Jews bury their dead for eternity, the space eventually got too small. Instead of finding a new place, the newer dead were buried on top of older ones. This is the reason the cemetery lies several meters above the street level. In its 'active' time from 1478 to 1787, about 100,000 people were buried here.