April 21st

Day 8 - Sunday 21st April   
Today we get to take Cheryl & Peter  around Prague, showing them some of the things we saw, but also joining them on things we hadn't done.
The first of the new things was Prague Castle and Palace. We had seen these from a distance, but today we get to go inside. 
The photo below shows Prague Castle from the river. The cathedral is contained inside the outer walls of the Castle. The building on the right is the Palace, and is still in use today.
To get to the Castle interior, you can either go up the hundreds of stairs from the river level, or you can walk through about 3kms of gardens and parks which incline slowly along a ridge, and enter to the right f this photo. We chose the long walk though the park, but the easier climb. We went down the stairs back to the river level. Poor old Pete struggled either way as he has had one knee replaced, and the other is on the way out. He did really well, and didn't complain.
 

 Along the ridge, we came across what is known as the metranome. This is a statue that has been updated. Originally a 17feet high statue of Stalin with out a dozen cronies standing behind him, was on the pedestal, but after Communism was thown out, the statue was torn down and a metronome replaced him, showing that Prague is changing pace, and moving forward.

'Elevensies' was held a the coffee shop just nearing the Palace.

 After a bit of a rest, and a beer/coffee and cake, we headed straight to the Castle via the outside of the Palace. The palace was in use, and was guarded by armed military security. We used the public loo - for a fee - then headed though the royal garden, with about 10 million other people. This was part of the 4-day Easter celebrations, so everyone comes to the castle.
This was the entrance to the Castle, guarded by two foot soldiers with serious looking rifles, so we didn't ask for autographs, or make any funny comments.

The square, inside the front entry. The queues you can see are to buy the entry tickets...it took ages!

St Vidas Cathedral - inside the walls of the castle.

 To get inside the catherdal, we had to queue for about an hour, in a queue which went around the whole cathedral base.

Inside, obviously, the cathedral.

It was an amazing piece of stonework.

The resident's live in this part. This is where the royal couple show off the new babies and such...

After seeing a lot of the above building from the inside, we then went through St George's Basilica. It was very small in comparison. From the Basilica, we headed down to 'Golden Lane' where all the tradespeople did their thing - armour making, gold making, etc. It was a long building which ran the full length of the outer wall. We went into a few 'houses' there and noted there were no windows. This was to stop the low life people being able to look into the Castle.


Inside the walled bit, I was able to show off my cross-bow skills in a range which was about 25m long. I hat the target with my last 2 shots. My first shot missed due to the trigger finger of the weapon.

An example of the clothing worn by the rich people in the castle

Here is an example of armour plating to protect the wearer. You may notice a piece of armour that is not normally used, unless you are a male member of the royal family.

 From here , we exited the Castle and took a long walk back to Old Town, and some lunch about 3:30pm.




Prague Castle, Meet Burger for 'lunch' at 3pm.
Back to room and a sleep....for some!
Meet at 2100 to go have dessert and coffee on the river.