the prague card
After our whirlwind walking tour of Prague, we knew what most of the major attractions were in Prague. We decided to buy a Prague Card, which would get us into most of the attractions for free.
We went to a few museums. One of the museum exhibits had this lithograph of Prague in the 1500’s. It was interesting to see how much the cityscape has changed, and yet much of it is still the same. Many of the landmarks in the lithograph are still standing today.
Probably the best museum exhibit was at Lobcowicz Palace. They had original symphonies by Beethoven and Mozart. I’m not much of a classical music guy, but even I thought it was pretty cool seeing the original ink as written by those great composers.
We also did an incredibly quick tour of a modern art exhibit. I don’t get modern art. This doesn’t look all that different from how my room looked in college… Does that mean I could’ve been a modern artist?
The biggest highlight for me was climbing the astronomical clock tower. There’s a series of spiraling ramps that take you to the top. Or you could just take the elevator in the center.
From the top there’s an amazing view in all directions. You can see all the tiled roofs of old town Prague, along with tons of church spires. They call Prague the city of a hundred spires, and from here you can see that it’s not an exaggeration.
There was a nice view of Prague Castle as well.
We also visited Vyšehrad castle, the front gates of which are seen here. The castle itself sits on top of a hill. Most of the exhibits were closed (much of Prague is closed on Mondays for some reason.)
The highlight of Vyšehrad castle (and the only thing that was open, more or less) was the casemate tour. I learned that a casemate is basically a tunnel underneath the castle wall.
The casemate at Vyšehrad is cool because it houses the original statues from the Charles Bridge. Apparently the ones on the bridge currently are replicas.
We went on a guided tour at the old town hall, which is connected to the Astronomic clock. The highlight of that tour was seeing the clockwork figures that appear hourly.
We went back to Prague castle as well. The Prague card allowed us to tour parts of the cathedral that we weren’t allowed to see before, as well as some exhibits that showed what life was like in the castle. I guess this is how a typical room was furnished in the castle.
Some of the guides that I saw online said that the Prague card isn’t worth getting. But I thought that it was worthwhile. It definitely was convenient, not having to have cash to visit all the various exhibits, and in the end I felt that I had seen most of what Prague had to offer, so I felt like I got my money’s worth.
