Day 1 PM - Charles Bridge Area

From the Old Town Square we wondered up to arguably Prague's most famous landmark - the Charles Bridge - via roadworks of course.

And, as expected, the bridge itself was heaving with tourists.

Charles IV who commissioned the bridge.

The actual bridge is lined with statues but it was impossible to get a view along them, so a few individual ones

Some of the statues are particularly revered and worn shiny from the constant touching by devotees.

And of course the great view up to the castle (hoping we'll get a better bit of weather tomorrow)

The bridge accommodates artists of all types

And the views with autumn colour were quite lovely.

As we planned a whole day at the castle tomorrow we didn't venture closer to it, but instead walked alongside the river to the next bridge where there were quite a few statues.

Absolutely no idea what David Cerby's "Babies" are meant to represent.  There are 3 large ones like this and numerous smaller ones.

I liked the inscription on the Statue of Harmony.

There must have been more than 1,000 gulls settling down for the night on the wall.

You can just about see the statues along the Charles Bridge.

We crossed over the next bridge and as we were walking back towards the town we noticed little creatures swimming around in the river.  We thought perhaps they were rats but having researched it turns out they are coypu, semi-aquatic rodents originally native to South America so I'm not sure how they ended up here.  But there were 8-10 of them happily swimming around and finding food.

When we'd been planning our itinerary I'd read about the Prague Ice Pub and by co-incidence found ourselves walking past so thought we'd pop in as it might be fun.

It wasn't - what a dump!  The woman on the entrance was surly and unhelpful and the staff inside were just miserable.  You paid c.£7 to go in for 1/2 hour and have a cape thrown over you to keep warm and a pair of woolly gloves thrust at you.  

Unsurprisingly, I suppose, everything was made of ice.

A drink was included so we both opted for beers and interestingly the glasses were also made of ice.  

It could have been so much better if there'd been an ounce of atmosphere in the place - I think we stayed about 7 mins out of our allotted 25 min time.

By now it was approaching blue hour so we wandered around the Charles Bridge for a little longer  but not easy to take low light photos without a tripod.

The organ in the church at the end of the bridge had allegedly been played by Mozart and as it was advertising an Organ/Trumpet/Soprano recital that evening we thought we'd go.  And it was very enjoyable even though the acoustics weren't particularly good. 

A warming glass of gluhwein/tea on the way home.

Music seems to be everywhere in Prague, this chap had wheeled his piano into the large square near our hotel.

There was a Lidl conveniently situated on the same road as our hotel, so we popped in on the way back to stock up with wine for Ian.  I just loved this sign in our bathroom and couldn't stop chuckling.