Good evening my friends,
Today we visited the National Museum in the morning. It is a natural history museum, housed in an old large sooty building with carvings all over it. I love old big natural history museums just like this one. My father-in-law and I enjoyed one that looked rather like it in Vienna four years ago. Alas, this museum did not measure up on the inside. Too much of it was roped off, or behind locked doors. As for the exhibits which were open, they were too unimaginative.There were lots of display cases with rocks, minerals and fossils behind them. The zoology hall was the best of the lot-it had a polar bear, lion, rhino, elephant, tiger, python and more, but it was not enough to redeem the whole place.
Next we took a special train up the side of a very steep hill to the tower on the left side of the Vlatava on the Mala Strana. This structure, called the Petrin tower, was build in the early 1890s in the same style as the Eiffel Tower. It is not as large, but it stands already on the summit of a very large hill. As a result, the view down and around is glorious.
An even better view at least of the older parts of Praha is to be had at the clock tower in the Old Town square. After a fascinating ride in a 360 degree glass elevator, the view from the top was amazing. Praha's tell-tale red tiled roofs were everywhere in evidence.
We went into the Franz Kafka house as well, to learn a bit about this brilliant but tortured Jewish son of Prague.
The restaurants here in Prague are everywhere and excellent. You almost cannot go wrong anywhere. Tonight we ate in the Mala Strana at the western foot of the Charles Bridge, last night in the Nove Mesto (New Town) on the other side of the river-that is the east side. The night before we ate on the west side of the Vlatava just south of the Mala Strana. Our first evening in Prague we dined in the Stare Mesto (Old Town)-on the east side of the Vlatava north of the New Town.Each meal was delicious, the service very good, and the price reasonable. The restaurants in Prague were as good as any I have experienced-this includes London, Paris, Rome, New York, Chicago or San Francisco.
I will talk to you when I arrive home.
Nashledanov (goodbye) from Praha-that is until next time.
