Prague Day Six, In Which I Reboot a Castle
Sep. 5th, 2019 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aThis ninth Rebooting the Web of Trust was expanded by one day, and one of the big reasons for that was to give a bit of rest in the middle, to allow people to come back reinvigorated. So that was today. There were four "Mandatory Fun" activities scheduled, and people were given the option to partake of one of those or alternatively to just sleep in: whatever recharged their batteries.
I took part in one of the activities, because I figure it's my job to connect with people as much as I can at RWOT, to make it easier and more meaningful when I'm interacting with them in the next six months to finish up the papers. I chose the Tour of Prague Castle, which started today at 9am on the other side of town.
Going to bed last night I had two alternate plans: out of the hotel by 7.30 and I could walk out to our starting spot. Or, out of the hotel by 8.10, and I could take the 25 tram line. So that meant that I slept fitfully after 5am or so, because I was worried about waking up before my alarm so I could do what I really wanted, which was walk out there. )(@#$@. I should just set my alarm back from 7am to 6am since at this point I prefer to be waking up then, to ease my trip back on Sunday (when I need to wake up early).
Anywho, I was out of the hotel by 7.15 and so walked.
It was a pretty magical walk across Prague in the morning. I'd biked most of the route a few days previous, but there's something different about walking a city. I enjoyed walking through the more industrial side of the city near us, then I went out of my way to walk right along the riverside of Letna Hill. I really got to see the river and the city across it, and it was quite beautiful.
Most of the way through the hillside park, I realized that I was really dawdling, and so I sped up through the rest, and soon hiked up the hillside, to circle the Castle (once more), headed toward our tour spot.
Funny story: I lost my map to our tour spot en route. Apparently Google Maps treats maps on your smart phone that you've sent over from your laptop differently than a native search. So I tried to change my origin point (to see how far I had to go) and it erased the map completed and it wasn't in my search history and the notification I'd received with the map had disappeared after I clicked it. *)@(#*)(#$.
As I walked, I managed to put back together some of the searches I'd done last night, figured out the name of the tram stop I was going to, and got back on track. Whew. I arrived there a bit more than 5 minutes early.
(Much of the problem was that the directions we all got were from Centrum, and we're all staying out in Holesovice.)
The actual tour was nice. The highlight was that our guide was constantly spewing historical facts. It was like a crash course in Czech history, but told in a totally random order. (Is there a good popular history on Prague? Or Czechia? If so I'd love to read it!)
The eeriest thing on the tour was probably seeing the big governmental building where the Nazis ruled in the '40s and where they worked to set up a prototype concentration camp near Prague. Brrr.
The Loreto church up on the hill was quite beautiful.
And then there was the castle proper ... which is maybe a little underwhelming. That's in large part because it's more a palace than a castle. As far as I can tell the fortification comes largely from the fact that it's out on a promontory. The big feature inside the "castle" thus is the cathedral. And, the cathedral is amazing. I'd been in the front of it before, but our tickets this time took us all the way around the back, so we got to enjoy it in all its impressive glory. And then the other thing that our ticket took us into was Golden Lane ... which is apparently storied as a location of alchemists and scientists under King Rudolph the second. But is now a set of tourist traps inside those houses ... and you have to pay to get in. Bizarre!
Overall, Prague Castle is like a little city, and that's pretty neat. As is the fact that it's been constantly evolving, and you can see centuries of architecture right next to each other. So maybe it's only the castle TOUR ticket that's a little underwhelming, because it only notably got us into the cathedral. Other than that, we could have just walked all around on our own (other than the armed guards and metal detectors at the gates, which are apparently a very recent bit of Security Theatre courtesy of the bed-wetting and paranoid current president, if our tour guide's description was accurate).
The trip back from our activity was a little hectic because we ran late, and there was a need to get across town and get lunch. I managed it by hopscotching across a few different buses and the metro thanks to the knowledge I've picked up in the last few days, but we had other people who ended up late as we tried to reconvene for RWOT proper.
And was the activity successful? I think so. The work that we did today was pretty limited, but people seemed reinvigorated. We'll see how it works out ...
After RWOT today, I had dinner with Joe, which was a treat. We've certainly talked in person and via email over the last two years, and we've worked in a few groups together. But this may have been the first time we just spent an hour and a half talking person to person about life, which was nice.
So that was Day Three of RWOT: tomorrow we finish up. (And it'll be a long day, as that's the only day I agree to go to the dinner. And I'm certainly not going to get into bed by a reasonable time tomorrow as a result, as we've been told it'll run 8 to 10.30, and I'm going to end up in Centrum when we're done.)
I took part in one of the activities, because I figure it's my job to connect with people as much as I can at RWOT, to make it easier and more meaningful when I'm interacting with them in the next six months to finish up the papers. I chose the Tour of Prague Castle, which started today at 9am on the other side of town.
Going to bed last night I had two alternate plans: out of the hotel by 7.30 and I could walk out to our starting spot. Or, out of the hotel by 8.10, and I could take the 25 tram line. So that meant that I slept fitfully after 5am or so, because I was worried about waking up before my alarm so I could do what I really wanted, which was walk out there. )(@#$@. I should just set my alarm back from 7am to 6am since at this point I prefer to be waking up then, to ease my trip back on Sunday (when I need to wake up early).
Anywho, I was out of the hotel by 7.15 and so walked.
It was a pretty magical walk across Prague in the morning. I'd biked most of the route a few days previous, but there's something different about walking a city. I enjoyed walking through the more industrial side of the city near us, then I went out of my way to walk right along the riverside of Letna Hill. I really got to see the river and the city across it, and it was quite beautiful.
Most of the way through the hillside park, I realized that I was really dawdling, and so I sped up through the rest, and soon hiked up the hillside, to circle the Castle (once more), headed toward our tour spot.
Funny story: I lost my map to our tour spot en route. Apparently Google Maps treats maps on your smart phone that you've sent over from your laptop differently than a native search. So I tried to change my origin point (to see how far I had to go) and it erased the map completed and it wasn't in my search history and the notification I'd received with the map had disappeared after I clicked it. *)@(#*)(#$.
As I walked, I managed to put back together some of the searches I'd done last night, figured out the name of the tram stop I was going to, and got back on track. Whew. I arrived there a bit more than 5 minutes early.
(Much of the problem was that the directions we all got were from Centrum, and we're all staying out in Holesovice.)
The actual tour was nice. The highlight was that our guide was constantly spewing historical facts. It was like a crash course in Czech history, but told in a totally random order. (Is there a good popular history on Prague? Or Czechia? If so I'd love to read it!)
The eeriest thing on the tour was probably seeing the big governmental building where the Nazis ruled in the '40s and where they worked to set up a prototype concentration camp near Prague. Brrr.
The Loreto church up on the hill was quite beautiful.
And then there was the castle proper ... which is maybe a little underwhelming. That's in large part because it's more a palace than a castle. As far as I can tell the fortification comes largely from the fact that it's out on a promontory. The big feature inside the "castle" thus is the cathedral. And, the cathedral is amazing. I'd been in the front of it before, but our tickets this time took us all the way around the back, so we got to enjoy it in all its impressive glory. And then the other thing that our ticket took us into was Golden Lane ... which is apparently storied as a location of alchemists and scientists under King Rudolph the second. But is now a set of tourist traps inside those houses ... and you have to pay to get in. Bizarre!
Overall, Prague Castle is like a little city, and that's pretty neat. As is the fact that it's been constantly evolving, and you can see centuries of architecture right next to each other. So maybe it's only the castle TOUR ticket that's a little underwhelming, because it only notably got us into the cathedral. Other than that, we could have just walked all around on our own (other than the armed guards and metal detectors at the gates, which are apparently a very recent bit of Security Theatre courtesy of the bed-wetting and paranoid current president, if our tour guide's description was accurate).
The trip back from our activity was a little hectic because we ran late, and there was a need to get across town and get lunch. I managed it by hopscotching across a few different buses and the metro thanks to the knowledge I've picked up in the last few days, but we had other people who ended up late as we tried to reconvene for RWOT proper.
And was the activity successful? I think so. The work that we did today was pretty limited, but people seemed reinvigorated. We'll see how it works out ...
After RWOT today, I had dinner with Joe, which was a treat. We've certainly talked in person and via email over the last two years, and we've worked in a few groups together. But this may have been the first time we just spent an hour and a half talking person to person about life, which was nice.
So that was Day Three of RWOT: tomorrow we finish up. (And it'll be a long day, as that's the only day I agree to go to the dinner. And I'm certainly not going to get into bed by a reasonable time tomorrow as a result, as we've been told it'll run 8 to 10.30, and I'm going to end up in Centrum when we're done.)