Prague Castle isn't a single building but a sprawling collection of buildings that spans about a half mile on the top of a hill. We braved the starting rain and got to see the ceremonial changing of the guard at noon in the courtyard just through this front gate. Fun fact from our tour yesterday evening: the guards' uniforms were designed by the costume designer who won an Oscar for designing the costumes of
Amadeus.
Next, we spent quite a while exploring St. Vitus Cathedral, which took 500 years to build. The front was only finished in the 1920s, but parts of it obviously go much further back and many historic kings and bishops are buried in its crypts. Here are a bunch of shots. As you can see, this is a church packed with gorgeous things to see. If some of the photos are a bit off-kilter, it's because I had to take many of them very quickly in order to take advantage of gaps between tourists.
And outside, just to balance out all that extravagant beauty, an ugly (scary) gargoyle:
After purchasing our train tickets for Wednesday's trip, we headed back to the center of Old Town to take another look at the clock and watch the Apostles roll by at the hour (I now have a fun little video to show my nieces and nephews on my next visit), and then crossed back over the Charles Bridge. I kept an eye out for the little marker Teresa told us about yesterday, which shows the location poor St. John of Nepomuk got tossed into the river. He was the court priest of King Wenceslas IV, who wanted the priest to tell him what his wife had confessed (he suspected she might be cheating on him). When the priest refused, the king had him tortured. When he remained silent, the king had him thrown off the bridge. It's now tradition to rub his head on the little plaque and make a wish, which I did in spite of my doubts about a poor guy who was tortured and thrown off a bridge being a source of good luck.
Now to relax a bit for the evening and recharge for tomorrow's adventures.
Amazing!!
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