Prague; Thursday, 25 July, 2013

I had a slightly earlier breakfast and headed out of the hotel quickly to get over to the castle early. Sadly everyone else had the same idea and whilst I got a seat on the tram as I was starting further out than most people, I still had to join the back of a very long queue for tickets at the castle.

First stop of the morning was the Cathedral which was heaving with tourists, though most were just standing near the doors, deciding they didn’t really want to pay to go in, so once past the ticket inspectors the rest of the Cathedral itself was pretty quiet.

The same happened in the Basilica of St George, behind the Cathedral, which had been under renovation when I came back in 2001, so I had a good look around there, before visiting the Old Royal Palace.

From the Palace I wandered down to the last thing on my ticket, the Golden Lane. This was really packed with tourists, and in the cramped narrow passageways of some of the buildings the humidity and unpleasantness did momentarily make me wonder why I was doing this.

Having visited the Golden Lane I’d done all the sites that my “Short visit” ticket allowed me to do, and given the temperature I certainly wasn’t going to pay the extra to climb 400 odd stairs to the top of the Great South Tower of the Cathedral, so I wandered back down into town and down to the riverside near the Rudolfinum. Here there were a couple of different companies offering river cruises so I decided to take a risk and go on another one.

This one turned out to be much better than the previous days tour. Not only did it include a full commentary (albeit in about 10 languages, which lead to some confusion, and on very short descriptions such as the names of bridges quite a bit of repetition with only accents to identify which language was which), it also had a café on board so I was able to enjoy the tour whilst rapidly draining a litre bottle of water.

After the tour finished I went for a wander through the small Jewish quarter area of the old town taking in the sights there before heading back over to the Old Town Square to take the lift to the top of the Astronomical clock tower for the views.

Back down on ground level I stopped in a small bar in the square behind Our Lady of Tyn church for a pre-dinner drink.

I’d already decided on the restaurant for dinner as I’d seen the menu earlier in the day and it appeared to be quite good value (in the end less than half the price of the previous evenings meal), but it did mean going all the way back up to the castle and then a bit further up the hill.

After dinner I wandered back down through the castle, which was still surprisingly busy even quite late in the evening and walked down the steps to the metro station at the bottom of the hill, where with perfect timing the tram back to the hotel was arriving, so I hopped onto that and headed back to the hotel to pack ready to move on in the morning.