Mon 19.Jun.2017
Prague, Czechia
It is laundry day in Prague, on a gorgeous warm sunny afternoon. Of course the laundromat is
half-below ground, but that is cool. A single tram ride from my apartment with no transfers.
I have been here almost two weeks, the longest I have been in one place since April in
California. It is good to catch my mental breath. I may even be able to start on the huge
backlog of photos I have accumulated while bouncing around for... is it really only six or seven weeks?!
So Spain, Yorkshire, Germany, maybe Colorado and Washington... they will get their turn. But for now
we get Prague, at least two pages of it. If I am lucky, the first page might get posted tonight, before
I move on tomorrow to Bratislava.
One of the best cheap entertainments in town is a leisurly walk across any bridge on a sunny day.
For a place that has at least five ways in from the surrounding city streets, the Franciscan
Garden is amazingly difficult to discover. I found it by pure accident, looking out the inner end
of a shopping passage. If I were clever, I would have put a photo of the passage itself on this page.
The garden is a restful haven in the heart of the city. One part is specifically for kids.
I went there again yesterday, and got approached repeatedly by people "inviting" me to a religious
event that evening, in the church that the garden actually belongs to. Fair 'nuff - it is their garden.
That is a risk you run in here.
Here is another nice place to park on a bench for a while, a river-level plaza near the Charles Bridge,
about which more in another post.
.
Not a toilet to use during flood season.
Liquor shops in the tourist zones are real big on these items this season.
The lurid plastic bottle on the right, shaped like a one-fingered fist, calls itself
Fakeer. 'Nuff said!
The expression in parentheses evaluates to 1.
This "dripstone wall" appears on a number of oddball-sights-in-Europe lists. It belongs to
the grounds of the palace of a former aristocrat, now the meeting place of the Czech Senate.
In the wooded labyrinth of paths that lead up to the extensive park complex on Petrin hill,
on the "narrow side" of the river.
OK - laundry is finished, at one of the coolest laundromats I have ever known. Comfy couches,
wi-fi, helpful staff who make up for the slightly confusing washers. Unfortunately, the wi-fi
developed problems, but no problem for this kid - I am now sipping ginger tea at a sympatico coffee house
between there and home. This page will get posted before I leave. And I hope the next one will
not be so long coming. There are too many fun photos in the queue for that.