Shameless Tourism: Great Success

Last week was fabulous. Proc? Because my grandparents came and visited! This was great for many reasons. I got to see two of my favorite familiar faces, I got to introduce my two worlds ("Hello, Magical Prague Land, this is A Slice of Home. Slice of Home, meet Magical Prague Land")... and it was the perfect excuse for me to check out all the cool things I've avoided for fear of being a shameless tourist. Well, I was a tourist, and I was pretty shameless. It was awesome.

So here's a brief overview of the events in the Grandparent itinerary:

1. Went to Old Town Square and showed them the astronomical clock. I don't know if I've posted a picture of it yet, but this clock is kind of a big deal.

cRaZy

2. Crossed the Charles Bridge ("THE" bridge of Prague... it's gorgeous but always crowded with tourists and caricature artists) and explored Lesser Town, the pretty little town down around Prague Castle. There's lots of little shops and things, and this insane little walkway we discovered. It's so narrow, they've set up a Walk/Don't Walk signal on either end!

WALK

DON'T WALK AHHH

Very silly.

3. Saw a production of Don Giovanni at the National Marionette Theatre. Okay, I really had high hopes for this because the notion of opera performed by puppets seems like a recipe for success... but I can't really say I enjoyed it all that much. I consider both opera and puppetry to be legitimate art forms, and this theatre seemed to be making fun of both. Prague is known for its for its puppetry, so I know there's got to be some good productions out there, but once again, the mantra of "If it's in Old Town Square, be skeptical" has rung true. In any case, I'm still holding out for Dracula Musical.

100 blog bucks if you know what movie this is from.

4. Visited the Dali exhibit. "Isn't that in Figueres, Spain?" No, that's the Dali Museum. This was a small exhibit packed with the fascinating and disturbing-on-a-freudian-level artwork of Salvador Dali. It might not have been a very exciting exhibit for the avid Dali aficionado, but I found it to be a delightful crash course in his work.

5. Visited the National Gallery. After my visit here during the first or second week, I had to show them the monstrous gallery. We were there for a couple hours, and even moving at a relatively fast pace we STILL didn't get all the way through. Anyone coming to Prague MUST visit the National Gallery, but be prepared to spend the whole day there.

6. Visited the Franz Kafka Museum. Yep, a lot of museum exhibits this trip. This one was by far my favorite. The museum is a very ominous but honest look into the... complex to say the least... life of renowned writer Franz Kafka. I learned a lot. And got a T-shirt! And in my Czech literature course we're reading a ton of Kafka (whoo!), so I came into class this week feeling like a total smarty-pants.

7. On the weekend we took a day trip to Tábor, a small, quiet town outside of Prague. This place was recommended by a FAMU professor because it's a gorgeous glimpse of Prague without all the fervor of tourism. We took a train ride there that was perhaps an hour... it was a very exiciting time for me because we sat in compartments. LIKE IN HARRY POTTER.

Oh yeah, and the view of the countryside was cool I guess. BUT OH MA GAH WE'RE ON THE HOGWARTS EXPRESS!

After visiting Tábor, I've decided that I must return to this pretty little town when it starts snowing, because it looks like the kind of place they model Christmas cards after. The buildings in Tábor all look like little gingerbread houses! Honestly, I kept expecting penguins and magical elves to pop out of nowhere and offer me candy canes.

The streets of Tábor wind every which way... apparently they originally built the city like this to thwart invaders. If by invaders they mean "American tourists who are used to streets that conform to a grid system," then it works like a charm.

Statue of Jan Hus. He's kind of a big deal.

 

Alas, there were no candy canes... but we got some amazing sweets at the cukarna!

Gee, this picture looks familiar...

So, whilst in Tábor, in addition to putting around and enjoying the town:

8. We visited the Hussite Museum. It was pretty cool, but a little difficult to appreciate since a lot of the information was in Czech. Still, there were some very fascinating artifacts from the Hussite Wars, and some awesome little scenes that I can only imagine some major Czech nerd geeking out about while they were constructing them:

Heck, I know I would.

9. We traveled through the town's underground tunnel. This was pretty cool. The people in the town used to have breweries under their homes because the temperature underground was perfect. After they stopped using them the people connected all the breweries with tunnels. When my grandma asked the tourguide why, she said, "For tourists." Face palm. But I totally bought into it... I thought it was pretty cool!

Much like this photo... right?

10. We saw an exhibit on the "Treasure of Tábor." Okay, so imagine you're some archaeologist in 2001 just absently digging in what's left of an old house in Tábor that was burned down a long ago... now imagine you suddenly find an complete clay jar dating back to the 1500s... now imagine that jar is FILLED with hundreds of silver coins! Now imagine you find ANOTHER jar ALSO filled with silver coins! And then on top of that you find a series of ancient Gothic tiles AND several household artifacts like jars and combs and rings and stuff!! AHHHH TREASURE OVERLOAD!!!

Shwing.

Yeah, it was pretty cool.

So that's more or less the grandparent experience. That, and a fair deal of shopping, and a fair deal of trying new restaurants all around the city. A pretty cool one was Výtopna, a restuarant where your beer is brought to you by toy trains. Yes, it made me just a little giddy.