Prague Day 1

Arrived in Prague to a temp of 3C and light rain. We went directly to our apt from the airport and met Martin who was handing over the keys to his apt which was in a building that was over 500 yrs old. It had 3 lge bedrooms, big kitchen dining room, separate lounge and very big laundry/bathroom. As Sue and Di were meeting us in Prague we booked this large apt to sleep us all in our own spaces. To say the least the apt was fantastic. Oak parquetry floors with timebr furnitre and white wash walls. All the internal walls were around 500mm thick and the windows were all dbl glazed and dbl shuttered. Here is a pic (sorry can´t turn it). We were on the 1st floor. We were all the windows to the left of the corner as well as 4 to the right of the corner. Fabulous!!!

The apt was located between 2 main sites being Charles Bridge and the Old Town Square. After dropping our luggage and having a delightful lunch across the road from the building we headed off on foot. With every corner we turned we were awestruck by the magnificent old buildings. They were extremely ornate, each floor and window were heavily decorated and all seemed to have amazing entry statements. We eventually made it (after tripping over our jaws along the way) to the Old Town Square. To our surprise in front of us as we turned the corner was Tyn Church. How gorgeous is it! It looks like your classic fairy tale castle.

The buildings around the castle were equally magnificent in their own way as you can see by the artwork on the outside of this little one tucked between other larger ones.

After sitting on a bench in the square (speechless) and to try and take it all in, we wandered towards the Charles Bridge. The weathered had cleared by this stage though is was still very cold. Here are a couple of pics we took on the bridge. For those that don´t know, Charles Bridge is a pedestrian bridge only and has been for centuries. It has been the main thoroughfare between the town and the palace which you can see in this pic, on the hill in front of the cathedral. FYI - many of the embassies in Prague are situated around the palace precinct. They don´t do it too tough.. they are also all in gorgeous buildings.

10 pts for guessing who the person is in black with their back to the camera.

We ended our day with dinner in a restaurant near our apt. It was in the basement of an old building. The ceilings were of vaulted brick work.

Cheers from Dominique & Mark

(apologies for any typos or poor grammer in our blogs... we are finding it difficult to get computer time, on quality equipment, at a reasonable rate and therefore we just sit here and bag it out quickly and "post" it to our blog)