Sedlic

June 29, Thursday Our plan today is to rent a car, go out into the countryside to the town of Sedlic where there is a very unusual church. We take a special bus that goes to the airport to pick up our rental car. We get a cute little, blue, standard transmission Kia. After a few jerky starts, Nick gets the hang of a standard back. The countryside is flatter and more agricultural than I had pictured. Lots of golden fields, no fences. We get close enough to one of them to see the plant well, It’s not wheat, it’s not oats. We have an opportunity to stop near one of the fields and take a picture to let google help us identify it. It’s mustard.

It’s lunch time and our good friend, google, finds us a well rated restaurant nearby. It has great food, cold beer and a view of the church.

From there we go to the church of the bones. We walk down the hill to the big church to get tickets to the two of them. The big church is quite plain, especially compared to others that we’ve seen recently. The spiral staircase seems to be what it’s most famous for and is pictured on the cover of the brochure.

Walking back up the hill to the bone church, we pass a Lego store and cafe. Someone in this town is really into Legos!

The bone church has a weather vane of skull and cross bones. They are restoring it back to a previous period when their were pyramids of skulls and bones and less decorative use of the bones. We have reservations for 8:00 at a special restaurant that used to be a Michlin star restaurant but the chef didn't want to have to conform to all the rules to maintain that rating. It is a bit outside the city so our plan is to fill the day and the go tothe restaurant so Nick doesn't have to do the city driving. Our answer is Pruhnicky Park. It has a castle and extensive grounds and isa Unesco heritage site. The castle closes at 5 but we can enjoy the gardens.

We've been incities a lot lately. it feels good to be walking in nature. The restaurant is amazing!

Prague castle

June 28 Tuesday We've established a routine of going to the neighborhood coffee take away place. We got the wlanut torte again today and ate it outside the little shop. our main point of interest is the castle with the Saint Vitus church. It overlooks the city on the other side of the river. They call the river Poltava but we know it as the Moldeau which is the German name. There is a tram that takes us up to the castle. One thing that is nice here is that seniors can ride the public transportation for free. Christina stills needs to buy a ticket. You can buy them on the tram. Rick Steves recommends that we get an early start as the area fills up with people later in the day. After we go through security, we see an ad for an E-motion display for another Mucha exhibit but it isn’t open and we don’ t see where to buy tickets or get info. we’ll check back later. The church is dedicated to King Wenceslas’ grandmother who was his spiritual inspiration. her name was Lumilda, a common name for women now. (Paula has helped two women with that name. One from Ukraine and one from Romania. One an excellent experience and one a very expensive experience.) One of the interesting aspects of the church is that the stained glass windows are done by different artists. One of them is Mucha.

You get your ticket punched when you go through different sections of the complex which helps to know where you’ve been. one of the areas is a little street with gift shops that is to look like a medieval street.

One area is the castle. There is a tower where a man was thrown out of the window after offending the royalty. He survived and there is now a monument there. It was actually legal to throw someone out a window under certain circumstances. Christina is really good with getting info on her phone and tells us that there is a good restaurant with a view in the palace. Sure enough! We all chose the beef burgundy and are happy with our choice.

Christina is collecting pictures of door knockers so we keep our eye out and find several u usual ones. It also makes us more aware of doors and there are certainly some nice ones.

One of the entrances to the church is closed but the gates are incredible. There are about a dozen small bronze scenes of scenes that appear to be of more everyday activities. There must be folk tales that go with them.

The palace part of the complex was taken during WWII, The family escaped to the States. They returned after the war and went through a lengthy legal battle but did get the property back and have been instrumental in restoring it. We go down to the gardens. Christina remembers a garden that is very nice but the steps down to it are too intimidating (over 300 of them).

We want to get back to the Mucha exhibition but it is a bit more complicated and involves exciting and entering through security again. We can see that the doors to the exhibit are now open so go back through security. This is similar to theVan Gogh immersion show that we saw in Atlanta with a huge room with the evolving painting images. It’s comfortable and cool so we’re happy. We have tickets for a concert in the Municipal building tonight. They suggest that we arrive early so we can see the Mayor’s rooms where there are several Mucha works. The concert is Vivaldi Four Seasons, Cannon in D by J. pachelbel, Gypsy Airs Opus 20 by P.Sarasate and Hungarian dance No 5 by Brahms. We stopped at a nice Mediterranean restaurant for dinner before the show with enough time to tour a bit of the building. Most of the concert goers were tourist but the performance was good and we enjoyed it,

After the concert we decided to go out to a tv tower that was supposed to have a good bar/ restaurant and view. It really didn’t have much of either, That didn’t stop us from having a fancy cocktail and dessert.

Another interesting,full day.