Old Town

Arriving at the train station in Prague with no local currency, we attempted to exchange money (no luck, no ATMs, no nothing) and negotiate a taxi ride into town.  According to the literature, most of the taxi drivers are frauds and con artists, so we tried to purchase Metro tickets with Austrian Schillings.  Again no luck.  Finally, a friendly, backpack-toting college student gave us some change since he was taking the train to Germany.

The Metro is much farther underground than we imagined and the escalators moved at breakneck speeds.  We eventually made it to the stop closest to our hotel and huckety-bucked up the escalators with our crappy luggage.

The streets in Old Town Prague are uneven and the hotel was farther away than we had hoped.  But we arrived successfully at Metamorphis Hotel in the small square just off of Mala Štupartská.  (Franz Kafka’s spirit and all Kafka-esque permutations flourish in this town.)  We scored a primo room on the second floor with open-air views of the interior of the square.

After losing the luggage, we ventured straight for Old Town Square.  Now the cobblestones were quaint instead of annoying.  The square is surrounded by historic buildings and free of traffic.  For these reasons, it is a natural draw.  It also benefits from open-air restaurants along the periphery, shops, monuments and street performers.  Beware of pickpockets as well.

Crowds gather at the base of the Old Town Hall to watch the ornate Astronomical Clock strike the hour, every hour.  The clock is truly amazing – mechanical figurines of the 11 Apostles and St. Paul, Vanity, Greed, Death and the Turk (a sign of lust) perform above the signs of the Zodiac.  Death pulls on a rope and inverts the hourglass in his hand.  The Turk shakes his head, Vanity looks in a mirror and Greed holds bags of money.  Two windows open and the Apostles move round in circles led by St. Peter.  At the very end of the procession a cock crows and the clock chimes on the hour.  Below the main clock is a calendar.  History has it that the original clockmaker, Hanuš, was blinded to ensure that he did not create a similar masterpiece for anyone else.

During our visit, the crowds were even thicker because a local strip bar came up with the idea to have scantily clad women stand under the clock and perform some sultry moves on the hour.  Instead of one show, the crowd got two.  Gaggles of men chased them down the street back to the bar.  We thought it was a great marketing ploy even though some wives were irate with their husbands.Lady before tyn

It’s well worth the couple of bucks to tour the interior of Old Town Hall.  We wandered through the Old Council Hall, the former house of Volflin of Kamen, saw the inner workings of the clock and the figurines up close, and the Oriel Chapel (check out the ceiling) before heading up the steps to the Viewing Gallery of the Old Town Hall Tower.  You’ll have plenty to see at 228 feet high.

Within walking distance of the square is the Powder Gate, which used to hold gunpowder in the 1700s, the Carolinum university, the fruit market, Ovocný Trh, Mariánské Square, Clementinum (seminary with an observatory tower) and the Clam-Gallas Palace.  For lunch, we stopped off at Taverna Toscana, an Italian place in an underground cave, just west of the square.

Spend time getting lost in the labyrinth of walkways in and around Charles Street.  We were pleasantly surprised by the Art Nouveau statue of a princess surrounded by roses at Karlova No. 22-24.  There are plenty of souvenirs in this area – everything from lace doilies to “The Pope Smokes Dope” t-shirts.

Eventually you’ll end up near the river by the Church of St. Francis, the Smetana Museum and the Old Town Bridge Tower.  This is another great place to view the Charles Bridge, the river, Prague Castle and the Little Quarter.