Prague Day 1 – The Castle & Don Giovanni Marionette Show

After a brutally long 7 hour train ride in one of the old school style trains where you sit in compartments containing 6 seats/compartment, we arrived in the much anticipated city of Prague yesterday.  We spent some time at the mall next to our hotel and then crashed early, catching up on some sleep.  Today, we headed out to begin exploring Prague, starting at the huge castle and finishing with a marionette version of Mozart’s Don Giovanni opera.  So far, Prague is not quite living up to the hype everyone gives it…

Prague Castle is, according to the Guiness Book of World Records, the largest coherent castle complex in the world.  Unlike other castles we’ve visited, there is no clear “entrance” because it’s made up of a number of palaces and ecclesiastical buildings.  When we got there, I didn’t have a clue where to begin!  We checked out a garden, wandered into what we think is a free art exhibit featuring a Czech artist named Josef Čapek, and then ended up at Saint Vitus’s Cathedral at the center of the castle complex.  Since there was a huge line up to go in (despite the cold weather, Prague still has a lot of tourists), we decided not to bother and went to the nearby ticket office instead to figure out how to visit the inside of the castle. 

Unlike most other castles we’ve been to, at Prague castle you choose the type of “tour” you wish to have (basically choose the number of buildings you wish to visit).  The Old Royal Palace can only be visited as part of the short or long tour, not on it’s own.  We opted for the short tour, which includes a self-guided visit to the Old Royal Palace, St. George’s Basilica, and the Golden Lane with Daliborka Tower.  In hindsight, we may as well have  just done the long tour, which includes several other buildings (including the National Gallery) for not much price difference.

The Old Royal Palace was mostly just big empty rooms which probably would have been more intersting with the audio guide, but Paul and I argued again about the importance of listening to an audio guide (he still hates them), and since we hadn’t eaten lunch yet, I let him win and opted for no audio guide so we could finish our tour more quickly.  Perhaps having the guide would have changed my opinion, but from what I saw, there’s not much worth seeing!  You don’t get to visit much of the Palace, and the parts you do see are very poorly organized (you can’t tell which way you’re supposed to turn because it’s a bunch of small, seperate rooms/towers branching out from the main hall in different directions rather than following one specific path from start to finish). 

St. George’s Basilica was a nice but small church, which took a grand total of 15 minutes to see.  I think it would have made more sense if they charged you to go into Saint Vitus’s and made St. George’s free!  The last part of our tour, the Golden Lane, was completely ridiculous – it’s just a street full of small gift shops!  I don’t know why they make you pay to go to a street full of shops, but they do.  The only thing that made this part worth seeing at all was the Daliborka Tower at the end, which houses a small prison in the lower part.

Once we finished touring the castle, we headed across the famous Charles Bridge to Old Town, in search of somewhere to eat.  Unable to decide on a restaurant, we ended up in the main square, Staroměstské náměstí, where we saw numerous vendors selling various types of food.  We decided to try some fire-roasted pork, which was delicious and juicy at first, but tasted not so good when it got cold 10 minutes after we got it because we were eating outside in zero degree weather.  When we noticed a couple of homeless guys nearby, picking leftovers out of the garbage, we offered them the remaining half of our cold pork and they happily accepted.  They were even more happy when we returned a few minutes later and gave them hot wine, which we had accidentally bought while trying to order goulash soup at the next stand we went to.  At least nothing went to waste!

After eating a bit more, we wandered around Old Town, getting pestered at every street corner by people handing out flyers for concerts happening this evening.  We considered a few options, talking about what kind of concert we would maybe want to see, and just as Paul brought up the fact that Don Giovanni was first premiered in Prague so that might be cool to see, we stumbled upon a marionette theatre featuring Don Giovanni.  We went to inquire about tickets for tonight’s show, and the lady said there were only 10 tickets left.  We decided we may as well give it a try, purchased our tickets, and then went to wander around to kill two hours before the concert.

This was the first time either of us has sat through an entire opera (although I’m not sure if tonight’s performance was a condensed version because it was only an hour and fifteen minutes long) and it was quite an interesting experience.  A few years ago, at a fundraising event, we bought our way into the opera The Marriage of Figaro with the UBC Opera faculty (they actually put us in costume and on stage with the chorus), and that was the first time I had ever heard entire pieces of opera music.  It sparked an interest in opera music for me, but I didn’t pursue that interest any further.  After tonight’s show, I’ve decided to take more of an interest in opera music and we’ve both decided that we’d like to see an actual opera (not a marionette version) before we leave Europe in about 8 weeks time, so we’re on the hunt for a good opera to attend. 

The marionette version was funny, but I was a bit dissappointed at how simple and low-budget the show seemed.  The music and singing was from a recorded version, the set was nothing special and the marionettes themselves are all for sale for 5500 Czech krowns at a shop down the street so if you can master the art of marionetting (and the guy at the shop made it seem easy, although I’m sure it’s not that easy), you could put on tonight’s show by yourself at home!  At 800 krowns per ticket, I just expected a bit more…

After a day of exploring in Prague, I feel like it is a truly beautiful city, but it’s overly touristy year round and the two main touristy things we did today were a bit of a dissappointment.  I had expected Prague to be one of my favourite cities because of what most people have told me, but so far, I think I liked Krakow better…