Catch Up - Friday 29th August

We caught a tram to the Old Town, and were pleasantly surprised at the historic beauty of Prague's buildings. Mostly in the Rococo style, many are painted pastel shades and have white sculpted fruit, flowers and faces above windows and doors. 

When we arrived in the centre, we found a market, and spent some time looking around the stalls. Lucy bought earrings; Siân bought a brooch; Dan bought some crisps on a stick. 

We then decided to walk to the Old Town Square, which meant an amble through winding cobbled lanes, walking past expensive designer shops and passing some more amazing buildings.

The Old Town Square is vast, and dominated by the Town Hall with its famous astronomical clock. We signed up to a walking tour of Old Prague, with the guide promising that she'd wait for Hopalong Dan, then went to watch the hourly clock show. At 2pm, wooden statuettes of the twelve apostles waved their way past a small window above the clock faces; a figurine of a skeleton rang a bell to signal the death of three sins, which were nearby and shaking their heads; a golden cockerel nodded; and a real bugler played a fanfare from the top of the tower. 

The clock faces too are impressive, telling the time in modern, Byzantine and old Bohemian formats, showing the phase of the moon and the current sign of the zodiac as well as informing the reader of which saint's day it is. 

After the clock show, we joined the tour guide for the free walking tour. She took us all around the Old Town, past numerous churches, through the Jewish Quarter and back via a theatre and the Powder Tower. What she told us about each site was incredibly interesting, and we'd never have found out so much about what we were passing otherwise. A particular highlight of the tour was St. James' Church, which has a modest façade concealing a magnificent Baroque interior, decorated with gold plated carvings and statues. 

Enticed by the prospect of more Mexican food, we once again ate at 7 Tacos. That evening, Dan stayed in the room whilst the others went down to the common room. They met a Serbian woman, an Austrian man and three fellow Brits of the same age, with whom they played pool. Nobody was very good, drawing the games out, and after playing at chatting, Lucy, Mitch and Siân went to bed at half one.