{"id":2693,"date":"2016-05-28T12:30:52","date_gmt":"2016-05-28T18:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dltwt.com\/?p=2693"},"modified":"2016-05-28T12:30:52","modified_gmt":"2016-05-28T18:30:52","slug":"palace-black-lights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/?p=2693","title":{"rendered":"Palace & Black Lights"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prague is absolutely awesome and very romantic.\u00a0 It is a city that totally delights your senses and tickles your fancy.\u00a0 Prague is absolutely awesome and very romantic.\u00a0 It is a city that totally delights your senses and tickles your fancy.\u00a0 On Thursday, we headed off to the Prague Palace for a tour.\u00a0 It is the largest palace in the world but most of it today is comprised of government executive offices and some museums.\u00a0 The crowds and tour groups were almost overwhelming – we would hate to be here in July & August.\u00a0 The Palace Grounds have some interesting history.\u00a0 Hundreds of years ago, the Protestants were protesting how they were treated by the Catholics.\u00a0 This protest started a “tradition” that resulted in wars.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The first time the Protestants threw 7 Catholics out the window.\u00a0 .\u00a0 .\u00a0 it started a 30 year war.\u00a0 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.
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\nThe Strahov Monastery next to the Palace was also an unlucky place.\u00a0 If an invading army arrived and was unable to penetrate the palace, they burned down the monastery.\u00a0 It was burned down 6-7 times over the years.\u00a0 The Monastery also has a brewery which is the oldest monastery brewery in the country.\u00a0 The reconstruction in early 2000 renewed a 600 year old tradition of beer-making at Strahov.\u00a0 For years, the monks had the exclusive “license” to manufacture beer.\u00a0 There is a special St. Norbert beer named after the founder of the order.
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\nThe large, impressive St. Vitas Church, in the middle of the Palace grounds, was started in the 1400’s but not finished until 1929.\u00a0 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.
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\nOne of the neighboring palaces was built by another wealthy European couple, the decorative outside of which took 29 years to finish.\u00a0 Dark concrete is first placed on the wall and covered with a layer of lighter concrete.\u00a0 The the lighter concrete is scraped away to create various designs.
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\nWe ended our day with a “Black Light” show.\u00a0 These theater productions have become a specialty of Prague.\u00a0 They have different performances all over the city.\u00a0 The concept is that the actors perform various “mime” acts and the black light highlights various objects as they fly around the stage.\u00a0 It was impressive but 1 1\/2 hours was sufficient.\u00a0 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.
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\"Prague<\/a>
Prague skyline with the Palace Grounds on the left<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"29<\/a>
29 years to create the exterior design<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Central<\/a>
Central Palace “Hercules” Gate<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Gothic<\/a>
Gothic Palace Cathedral – note the 20th century architects in the lower portion<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"250,000<\/a>
250,000 tiles<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Wencesles<\/a>
Wencesles Square – 500,000 protested communism here in its final years<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Outside<\/a>
Outside the Opera<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prague is absolutely awesome and very romantic.\u00a0 It is a city that totally delights your senses and tickles your fancy.\u00a0 Prague is absolutely awesome and very romantic.\u00a0 It is a city that totally delights your senses and tickles your fancy.\u00a0 On Thursday, we headed off to the Prague Palace for a tour.\u00a0 It is the … Continue reading Palace & Black Lights<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Si9J-Hr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2693"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2695,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2693\/revisions\/2695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}