Prague is absolutely awesome and very romantic.  It is a city that totally delights your senses and tickles your fancy.  Prague is absolutely awesome and very romantic.  It is a city that totally delights your senses and tickles your fancy.  On Thursday, we headed off to the Prague Palace for a tour.  It is the largest palace in the world but most of it today is comprised of government executive offices and some museums.  The crowds and tour groups were almost overwhelming – we would hate to be here in July & August.  The Palace Grounds have some interesting history.  Hundreds of years ago, the Protestants were protesting how they were treated by the Catholics.  This protest started a “tradition” that resulted in wars.  The Protestants would invade the palace & church and found that the Catholic officials were ignoring them so they threw them out the window to their death.  The first time the Protestants threw 7 Catholics out the window.  .  .  it started a 30 year war.  A couple of hundred years later, it all happened again with two Catholics thrown out the window. This time, it only started a 15 year war.

The Strahov Monastery next to the Palace was also an unlucky place.  If an invading army arrived and was unable to penetrate the palace, they burned down the monastery.  It was burned down 6-7 times over the years.  The Monastery also has a brewery which is the oldest monastery brewery in the country.  The reconstruction in early 2000 renewed a 600 year old tradition of beer-making at Strahov.  For years, the monks had the exclusive “license” to manufacture beer.  There is a special St. Norbert beer named after the founder of the order.

The large, impressive St. Vitas Church, in the middle of the Palace grounds, was started in the 1400’s but not finished until 1929.  The Gothic front of the church is impressive (and looks like it was hundreds of years old) but the surprising placement below the primary window of the 4 architects involved in the design of the church , dressed in 1929 suits, gives away the true age. The church also has a 15th century mural containing over 250,000 tiles that is still very impressive today.

One of the neighboring palaces was built by another wealthy European couple, the decorative outside of which took 29 years to finish.  Dark concrete is first placed on the wall and covered with a layer of lighter concrete.  The the lighter concrete is scraped away to create various designs.

We ended our day with a “Black Light” show.  These theater productions have become a specialty of Prague.  They have different performances all over the city.  The concept is that the actors perform various “mime” acts and the black light highlights various objects as they fly around the stage.  It was impressive but 1 1/2 hours was sufficient.  It was unfortunate that a large group of Chinese tourists were there in this small theater and on their phones constantly which was extremely distracting in the dark.