Last weekend was our penultimate weekend in Prague. We decided to visit Prague Castle on Saturday morning, and after reading some reviews, we bought advanced tickets online. We didn’t realize that we bought tickets through some sort of broker, and had to pick them up at a storefront in the old town. This wasn’t a huge inconvenience because we were going to be walking right past it on the way from our apartment. We also bought the audio guide, which was a phone based app.

The walk to the castle took up down into the old town, across the river and the up the hill on the other side. When we were about three quarters of the way there, the sky clouded over and started to pour. Luckily we were cutting through a park at the time and we were able to find a nice big tree to shelter under. The rain passed after about 10 minutes and no worse for wear we headed for the stairs (I think there were 6,000 steps, but Sue will probably have an exact count; the exact count was 155) that led up to the castle.

The castle has been the seat of power for kings, emperors and presidents since it was build in 870 A.D. The Guinness Book of World Records claims it is the largest ancient castle in the world and in 2024 attracted 2.59 million visitors. We believe about half that many were there last Saturday. The grounds comprise a really nice park that overlooks the city and then a walled fortress. We wandered through the park, looking for the entrance, which to us seemed to be hidden in the most remote section of the grounds (and of course, up another bank of stairs). The most important buildings in the castle are St. Vitus Cathedral, St. George’s Basilica and the Old Royal Palace, which contains Vladislav Hall. The tickets were used to enter each of the buildings and the lines for both churches stretched for at least 100 meters, so we decided to skip them. The Old Royal Palace, especially Vladislav Hall were very interesting. The Bohemian crown jewels are kept in St. Vitus Cathedral, and a set of reproductions are on display in the one of the rooms of the Old Royal Palace. After visiting the Old Royal Palace, we wandered inside the castle for a while longer and then decided to head down the hill and took the Metro home.

Overall, we thought the castle was interesting, but it was very very very crowded, it was not sign posted very well, the audio guide was very hit or miss, with places marked as having an entry in the guide, not having a matching number in the app, lines were not well managed and some of the crossed back and forth. All in, not the greatest experience and certainly not the best managed national treasure. I think we’re a little spoiled, but I would say this was probably among the least well organized tourist sites we’ve ever been to.

Saturday evening we took a two-hour sunset jazz cruise on the Vltava, the river that runs though the center of Prague. We had a great time, the trio of keyboard, bass and sax played various jazz classics and we watched the sunset and took photos of night falling on Prague. It was really beautiful and capped off a busy and interesting day.

Sunday, because we are gluttons for punishment, we decided to climb to Havlíček Gardens. It is one of the many hilltop parks in Prague, and I am pretty sure that it was not named after the famed Boston Celtic player John Havlicek, but since I can’t read the signs, I can’t be positive. I am not sure why were weren’t satisfied with crossing the street and walking through the hilltop that is outside our front door (where, by the way we are already almost at the top!). But I guess we thought it would be fun to see another view of Prague (every road leads up here and there are fantastic views everywhere!) and the park contains a folly built in the 1880s, so that seemed worth visiting. We stopped at a Muj Bagel, which claims to have real New York bagels, and picked up a picnic lunch. We expected to have to walk uphill to get to the park, but what were weren’t expecting, was the climb down one set of hills then up another, so it was a bit more strenuous to get there than we expected. We are getting in excellent shape. Hills and stairs, hills and stairs.

The park was worth the climb. We entered near the top, found a nice place to picnic and ate our not quite New York, but pretty good, bagels and soaked up some sunshine. After lunch we took photos overlooking part of the city and wandered to find the folly (AKA grotto). It is built into one of the walls of the park and has a nice little fountain and two balconies that have a great view of the park. We took some photos and then headed back home.

We spent some of the rest of the afternoon planning for our next stops in Budapest and Athens, but you will have to read about those once we get there.