{"id":7980,"date":"2026-06-25T06:12:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T06:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/?p=7980"},"modified":"2026-06-25T21:36:43","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T21:36:43","slug":"across-the-charles-bridge-to-old-prague-wednesday-june-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/2026\/06\/25\/across-the-charles-bridge-to-old-prague-wednesday-june-24\/","title":{"rendered":"Across the Charles Bridge to Old Prague: Wednesday, June 24"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We all “slept in” until about 7, which was nice, especially for Andrea, who tends not to sleep well. We dawdled a bit over our breakfast of yogurt and granola\/rolled oats and the photos for the blog, and set out around 9 am to walk to and across the Charles Bridge in the morning light, and then on through the oldest part of town to Prague Castle and the St. Vitus cathedral on the top of the hill on the West side of the Vltava (Moldau in German). This is such a well-trodden path I don’t need to say much about it (and it was buzzing with tourists by the time we got up the hill). But we stopped for photos many times along the way, and also in a very cute caf\u00e9 + antique store for iced coffee and other cold beverages right at the start of the 200+ staircase to the castle, which is not really a castle, but a gigantic complex of buildings that are partly museums, partly government buildings (the president of the Czech republic has his official residence there), and partly places where tourists can either see the view or admire the architecture and interiors at various degrees of distance. The outdoor spaces are accessible without any tickets, and so we roamed around and saw the Czech Philharmonic orchestra practice for this evening’s free open-air concert, walked around the huge Cathedral, and eventually found our way to the park below the castle, which was refreshingly cool and GREEN after all the massive piles of sandstone, granite, marble, copper, clay tile, and whatnot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fully committed to being tourists this morning: Andrea and Peter with the Charles Bridge in the background<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The river Vltava with the Charles Bridge in the morning light. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral as seen across the river <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Cooling off before the ascent to Prague Castle!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The charming indoor area of the little caf\u00e9 by the castle steps<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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It wasn’t the 200 steps up, it was the brutal sun, even at 10:30 in the morning. We were glad to have had some cold drinks before braving the shadowless stairs. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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All the way at the top on the Castle Plaza. Again, the heat kept people away from the enormous plaza.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The Cathedral of St. Vitus (and a couple of other saints, but this will do). Started in the 13th century and completed in the early 20th, so there are actually some art nouveau stained-glass windows by Mucha in the Gothic cathedral. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The gate on the side of the nave had a mosaic, rather than sculptures, which was new to me for Gothic cathedrals. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Two fun gargoyles<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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And a little gargoyle who also happens to be cross-eyed<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Out of the heat and below the castle in the castle gardens.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Looking up from the gardens\/park to the top of the castle rock\/hill<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From the gardens, it was only a fairly short walk back to the old town, where we found another beer garden with lots of shade, and had a satisfying lunch (salads, burgers, goat cheese with beets, and a veggie chicken kebab were had) before we headed to the tiny museum we had wanted to visit: the Karel Zeman Museum, celebrating the work of the most famous Czech animator, a self-educated trailblazer in a variety of animation techniques and cinematic illusion. I had known nothing about him until just before we came, but a former student had suggested that I go see the museum, and when I mentioned its existence to Peter and Andrea, they got very excited. Peter, who is a total film buff and used to work in film (as did Andrea), has loved Zeman’s films since he was a little boy, and once we were in the museum, was our expert guide. The museum was fun because it was extremely interactive and let us “play” with a lot of things, but unfortunately, it was not air-conditioned–a couple of small portable AC units could simply not fully combat the afternoon heat. So it was not the restful cooling-off time we had in other museums in Vienna. But we had a wonderful time and I learned a lot about this quirky and ahead-of-his-time movie maker, who influenced Tim Burton and other animators. Labeled both “the Czech M\u00e9li\u00e8s” and “the Czech Harryhausen,” he is really an artist of his very own. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Peter in front of the Karel Zeman museum with its interactive special effects displays. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Silliness at the museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The model of the Jules Verne submarine from one of Zeman’s Verne adaptations<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Antje takes a fish ride on the Vltava with Zeman’s help<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After we had explored all the museum had to offer, we had just barely enough energy and tolerance for the heat to get ourselves back across the Charles Bridge and home (Mark volunteered to commandeer the GPS on his phone). We stopped for ice cream at the same gelateria as yesterday to cool off a little bit, and then we went home and ALL took naps of various lengths. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the evening, after it had cooled down a little bit and we had sufficiently recovered, we went just a little ways down the street to a place we were very much looking forward to exploring: the “palace” (think: indoor mall-type space) \/ cafe \/ movie theater Lucerna. The movie theater itself is over 120 years old and the oldest continuously open movie house in the Czech Republic (and probably far beyond), and the entire complex, which is half of a street block or more, is a beautiful art deco shopping area from the mid-1920s. It was surprisingly quiet (shops were either closed for the day or empty storefronts) but also just absolutely gorgeous, and the caf\u00e9\/bar directly associated with the theater was WONDERFUL. We had super simple sandwiches and a jar of creamy cheese chunks marinated in oil that came with slices of rye bread, and that was a great light last meal of the day. After taking a few more photos, Andrea and I said goodbye to Mark and Peter, who were going to see a movie (and take pictures of the interior of the theater), while the two of us wandered up and down the ENORMOUS Wenceslaus Square, taking in the incredible variety of fa\u00e7ades in beautiful evening light. Eventually, we grabbed a few more groceries for tomorrow morning and then headed home for the night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The famous “Grand Hotel Europa” on Wenceslaus Square in the evening light<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Beautiful Art Deco hotel fa\u00e7ade on the square. We took photos of many more fa\u00e7ades in many architectural styles, but I’ll spare you the rest. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The National Museum at the top of Wenceslaus Square<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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And the equestrian statue of King Wenceslaus in front of it, just so you have a reference for this: <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Main hall of the large Lucerna Palace complex, with the entrance to the movie theater and a sculpture by the ubiquitous David \u010cerny, which turns the famous equestrian statue of King Wenceslaus from the square upside down.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The gorgeous Kino Lucerna movie theater. Mark and Peter had about 5 fellow audience member for their horror movie. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Peter was so excited to be in this historic space from the early days of cinema-viewing. Today was truly “movie day.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all “slept in” until about 7, which was nice, especially for Andrea, who tends not to sleep well. We dawdled a bit over our breakfast of yogurt and granola\/rolled oats and the photos for the blog, and set out around 9 am to walk to and across the Charles Bridge in the morning light, … Continue reading “Across the Charles Bridge to Old Prague: Wednesday, June 24”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2026-vienna","category-photos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7980"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8067,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7980\/revisions\/8067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}