Prague: And it was all yellow

15 November Prague I                        And it was all yellow.

First thing I noticed in the taxi from Prague Airport was the number of yellow buildings. Yellow is not my favourite colour since when I was little, the shiny colour of yellow pencils hurt my eyes. However, these building are generally rather more pleasing to the eye than cheap yellow pencils. 

The first place I discovered today was the Gallery of Steel Figures. I had to go in to honour the movie and junk nerds in my family.

I walked the touristy part of Prague today. There was even an equivalent of Times Square (NY) with all the character dress-ups and pretend statues begging for money in return for photos. The first picture of the three above shows Charles Bridge. The other two were taken from it. The number of souvenir shops surrounding Charlies Bridge was overwhelming. On the bridge itself there were sketch artists, jazz bands, jewellery sellers, and so on. To take photos it was a trick to manoeuvre amongst the sellers and the tourists taking photos of each other. There were a number of statues, some of which had places to touch for luck or something, as demonstrated below. It took several shots to take the second photo to show both the statue and the tourists without anyone in the way.

On the other side of the bridge, I passed restaurants seeking the tourist dollar and wandered up to the KGB Museum, wondering why so many Policie were in the area. Of course the Embassy of the United States is just metres from the KGB Museum. The Museum looked tacky and I would have had to wait forty minutes for the next entry so I decided against it. Continuing up the hill I could have gone to the Prague Palace but decided I was over the tourist scene. I'm pretty sure I came across another example of the double plaster technique I learnt about in Dresden yesterday. This photo isn't as pretty as the Dresden example but then again it doesn't appear to be as recently completed as the Dresden one either.

I ran out of data credit so for the return journey I navigated with a little memory and a little bit of hunch. Gradually, the tourist numbers dwindled and I counted my blessings that I had jagged booking a hotel in a quieter part of Prague. I knew I was on the right track when I came across the Powder Tower for a second time, a city gate between the ‘new' and ‘old’ Prague.

When I returned to the hotel my room was in the process of being cleaned so what else to do but have a beer in the bar. It was only my second time there but the barman offered me “my seat”.

Last night I had dinner in the bar. It rounded off a day of eating in the style of my son: I had spaghetti ragu bolognese for lunch and a peanut butter cheese burger with chips dipped in tangy tomato sauce for dinner. I skipped lunch  today and for dinner had a beetroot salad and gnocchi with winter vegetables and fried sage (pictured below). I don't know what the white triangles were but they were some type of tasteless and hard vegetable. I have never seen gnocchi served in straight cylindrical form before but it was tasty enough. All those vegetables, Mum! So healthy! And just see how popular my hotel's restaurant is. There was one other sole diner when I arrived and by the time I left a couple had arrived. We all spoke English. I looked up the eating habits of a local. Apparently, they don't go out except on Fridays and Saturdays. Those still in the habit of Communist times, eat their dinner at 4 or 5pm (the website said the over 35s - a 35yo would have been 5yo when the wall came down).

And now I have a fully belly and a glass of wine, good night!