Morning Walk to Prague Castle Without the Crowds

A 7 a.m. start to our walk up the steps to Prague Castle this morning — the objective being to see the buildings without thousands of people crowding around them.

The streets were very quiet, and the steps had only a few other people on them. Some had clearly had the same idea as us, I suspect. It was a nice cool morning and overcast, perfect for the ascent.

Sure enough, the square outside the Castle was deserted. St. Vitus Cathedral is so big it’s hard to photograph, but we did our best. I suggested to Sarah that she stand in front of it to provide some scale, but I could hardly see her at all. We swapped roles in the hope that my bright orange shirt would stand out more.

See if you can spot Sarah in the pic below. 😂

Next on our short tour was St. George’s Basilica and a view of the back of the Cathedral. The basilica is tiny in comparison and much more simply decorated.

We thought there were royal gardens off to the side here that we’d be able to walk through, but they also require a ticket. $36 NZD each will get you into everything up here, I believe. The gardens area is actually more of a forest of large trees, so I’m not sure they’d be much to look at anyway.

We took a different route back down the hill so we could find a geocache on the way. This led us along some very beautiful streets. The cache was hidden in plain sight inside a fake lantern attached to the outside of a house — a fun one to find. Below is a quick video of me putting it back after finding it so you can see how it’s hidden.

It was slightly after 8:30 a.m. when we got back down to the level of our apartment. It hadn’t taken us as long as we expected to visit, so we continued on to see how busy things were on the Charles Bridge. It was much quieter this morning, and with no sun in our eyes thanks to the overcast sky, it made for better photos.

After that, we stopped at the local mini-market to buy pastries for morning tea and bread rolls for lunch. The selection today was much better — it pays to get there early.

We held off eating them until 10 a.m., when we enjoyed them with coffee on the balcony. Then it was time to write up the blog and do some reading. A great morning excursion.

At lunchtime we took the tram to the Tesco Hypermarket for a few things. The 5 km walk would have been too much on top of this morning’s walk and our planned visit to another church later. We activated a tram ticket on our phones that gave us 90 minutes’ access — enough to get there, do some shopping, and get back. Sarah used the opportunity to look for shorts again! I was amazed because this time she actually found something — a nice skort.

We had a late lunch after the shopping trip and then walked across to Old Town for the 3 p.m. entry to the Church of Our Lady before Týn. Photos weren’t allowed inside. It was interesting, but not that impressive — smaller inside than it looks (not like the TARDIS!).

While on this side of the city, we went to check out another sculpture by the same artist who made the Babies — the Statue of Saint Wenceslas Riding an Upside-Down Dead Horse. The horse was upside down, not the rider. Very strange. It wasn’t far from there to the Revolving Head, which was due to move at 4 p.m., so we waited 20 minutes. When it finally started, it was quite cool, but it could have been sped up a bit. It carried on for 15–20 minutes; we watched for about 15 and then headed back.

It was very crowded and hot crossing the bridge back to Lesser Town. We’d walked over 5 km this morning and probably another 5–6 km this afternoon. We had definitely earned a beer, so we stopped at the bar downstairs for a nice cold Budvar lager.

Dinner was then cooked — seasoned chicken, stir-fry noodles, and a salad. A bit same-old, but quick and tasty, so hard to go past.