Prague#5 - Castle above the wind

March 19, 2016

Prague castle is located above the plain overlooking the old town, you can access it through bus but we prefer a pilgrim route with our favorite transportation - funicular. This gets us to a vast public part even slightly above the castle, and you got a panorama view of the city -- the true city of hundred-spired reveals at this point.

Inside the park, a petite Eiffel Tower is standing - a more or less tell commute tower? Across the park, You start descending toward the castle - The meandering network path surrounding the castle add extra interest when the vanishing point constant shift in perspective. The castle complex consists multiple buildings, it's vast and rich, to avoid digging into the history too much; let me use following photo exchanges for text.

the prague castle - soaked with tone of fall

Prague#2 - Eastern Europe Trip - Municipal House and Old Town Plaza

March 4, 2016

Municipal House is at our hotel proximity so we dived right in after dropping the luggage. This is a cloudy drizzling day, fit perfectly to visit any interior space; a small tip - my rule of thumb is always flexible on the sequencing of your list of attractions so they can be rearranged based on your real-time situation. The city hall featured Mucha's art nouveau mural throughout, looking at them as mural stirs a very different feeling from the 2d graphic. It's very engaging, the expression coming out of the body language and the starring eye of the illustration speaks to me directly, intimate and forced.

Within 5 minutes walk is the old town plaza, which includes the astronomy clock, old town hall and couple historic building, passing through the square, we stopped by the oldest Jewish joint -

Josefov, or the Jewish quarter; an area in between the old town and Vltava river, understand as an old neighborhood surrounded by a wall - ghetto, which the Jews were limited to live in this area. However, you won't feel the narrow street these days as all of the building but couple historic building were torn down in early 20 century to clear out the slum. We wondered around it and tried to avoid the crowd which take us to the riverfront, overlooking the castle up above the hill.

The sun sets early in the fall, the overcast cloud restored every pigment to its natural state; layered red tile, chrome leaves and blue river in order and ready for the night.

Prague#1 - Eastern Europe Trip - Exertion

March 2, 2016

In 2011, I was planning a 10 days trip to visit Eastern/ middle Europe. This all initiated by two little instances in my daily life, a recommendation from a colleague to check out a UNESCO town in Czech and a growing popular scene set ink-pop drama. 'Český Krumlov' and 'Hallstatt'. The rest of the trip kind of built around figuring how and where to go around these two charming towns, it's also adding additional challenge if you don't want to do the round trip flight (because I really hate losing a day just to catch the return flight) with a tight budget. After evaluating couple scenarios, we set the itinerary. Our first stop? The city of hundred spires - Prague.

To be fair, Prague isn't some place you visit just to kill the time in between, and I don't mean to make it sounds not important. This is a charming city has a lot to explore - part of mid-century super power Habsburg family, King of Bohemian- the reign of the region and left a legacy of oldest castle complex of the world. Plus, one of my favorite artist - Alphonse Mucha, devoted last 20 years of his life on artwork admired by his nation. And those towers, yes, if you have endless energy don't mind climbing up and down - this can also be your parkour playground.

We took a usual red eye flight straight to Prague from New York. From the airport, you need a train to connect the closest metro stop, which you need to time quite precisely cause the bus doesn't come that frequent. We had endless debate whether to take a bus or a taxi in exchange for time. Short answer to this, if you aren't traveling alone, any option don't initiate a fight is a good answer, you truly don't want this to spoil your mood on the first day of the journey.