Praha - Day II

We began Sunday with a funicular ride up to the top of Petrin hill in order to get a nice view of Prague from above. At the top of the hill is an observation tower that looks a bit like the Eiffel Tower, so we decided to walk up the 299 steps required to get to the top in order to have the best possible view.

The observation tower indeed offered a beautiful view of the city, with Prague Castle on the left (top photo below) and the Charles Bridge as well as the Old Town to the right (bottom photo below).

On our way back down the hill we stopped at the St. Nicholas Cathedral, which dates to the 13th century (at least in part) and is known for its recognizable belltower.

I liked the interior -- particularly the view of the massive dome from below.

Next we visited the Josefov, Prague's Jewish Quarter, which includes a number of sites related to the country's Jewish history. It was interesting to see but very sad as well given the devastation inflicted by the Nazis during WWII (less than 3% of country's Jewish population remained after the war).

We spent the remainder of the afternoon walking around and enjoying the scenery / architecture. I think Prague is definitely one of the more beautiful cities that I've seen.

We passed countless buildings with interesting facades like the ones below.

We decided to grab an early dinner rather than roll the dice on airport / airplane food. On the way to the restaurant, we walked back across the Charles Bridge. I assume that one has to get up pretty early to see the bridge without anyone else on it.

There were a couple of puppeteers performing on the bridge and I was really impressed by their skills. They had music playing and the puppets were perfectly sychronized to the drums and guitar.

While we didn't end up getting traditional Czech fare for dinner (as appetizing as goulash sounded), we at least decided to go for a traditional Czech drink -- beer. According to our cab driver from the first night, the average Czech drinks around three beers a night (I have no idea whether this is actually true, but did "confirm" via Wikipedia that the country has the highest per capita beer consumption in the world...). Na zdraví!