LAZY DAY

The crowds in  Prague are awful, no other word for it, but we are coping.  To avoid them and take some more photos I headed out early.  It was well worth it, the day a little grey but being able to walk around without banging into crowds well worth it.

Tourism gets underway early here, the tours start gathering at 8 and it isn't long before spaces fill up.  I stopped to see the astronomical clock (500 years old and beautiful) strike 9 and then headed off in exactly the wrong direction to meet everyone and head up to the castle. I realised it and walked in a circle to get back to where I was supposed to be.

Missing  them I headed up, and I mean up, to the castle.  It dominates the skyline. Looking in all directions there are tour leaders holding (folded) umbrellas, little flags and in one case a small stuffed toy aloft. I had a look around on my own for a while and chanced on a small exhibition of photos by Czech photographers from World War II.  Often the unexpected one comes across is the treat. This was one of those treats.

I couldn't resist,  so I joined a guided tour of the Cathedral and followed the small folded purple umbrella. It was worth it as I spent much longer in the cathedral than I would have and found out more. I dropped out before they headed into the palace to join The Intrepids for the Changing of the Guard.  Ceremonial marching unexplained and a not quite clear sequence was still fun to see, and gotta love a bit of brass music on the balcony. At one point three guardsmen marched out of sight never to be seen again.

Headed down on a tram to meet up with John, but due to a public transport error we were so late we missed him. We sat and watched the Police book cars driving into the pedestrian zone for a while then headed for the nearest cafe to a surprisingly bad bread roll.

Bread so far on our trip has been very good everywhere, so it was a bit of a shock.  Not wanting to stay any longer I led Rob to the James Bond cafe I found in the morning before we strolled back to the flat to put our well used feet up for a while.  We share the apartment with L and L, who had not had the absinthe experience so we all meandered over to our favourite Absintherie. De to try the other version, where the sugar is burnt over the liquor to caramelise then added.  It looks great, but I didn't enjoy it as much as the water dissolved version.

We decided to go into a restaurant with a bit of live music, and lively music.  Good plan, until you get inside and realise how loud it is there. Then the band took a break while we ate. Burgers nearly all round, I had sausages in  a delicious tomato spicy sauce.  I know you all hang out for pictures of my plates but bad luck, I just ate up.

L and L took off so that L could take some night shots and we just called it a day only stopping to find that the local supermarket had run  out of bananas.   The most wonderful thing about our apartment are the pipes - they sing.  Where we would usually complain about noisy pipes these are very musical and make me smile every time I hear them.  Off to the shower now. Good bye.