crappie for the garden: Prague 1.0 (the touristy entry)

My search for crayfish betterment has taken me on yet another epic European adventure. This time I journeyed to Prague in the Czech Republic, considered to be one of the most beautiful European cities, to attend a 3.5 day conference on biological invasions. "Wait, what" you say? Things like phragmittes, rusty crayfish, that huge vine growing along the highways in the Appalacian mountains...you know, things living in places they shouldn't, destroying the indigenous ecosystem. ANYWAY. Prague. We spent an evening and then the next whole day wandering the city.

Here is lovely, ancient Prague castle at sunset:

Here we had climbed a tower on the Charles Bridge, and were afforded an amazing view over the city on both sides of the river. We would have walked up the hill to the special observation tower, but one of my companions was limping, the other had a sore neck, and I had a headache. So we settled for this:

And here's the view looking to the right, you can see the river:

There were lots of large bats flying around. I made a video to show my friend who is studying bats. Now here we have a view showing the bridge and castle, taken from the top of the tower on the east side of the bridge:

So, the next day we had lots of time for cruising around the city. There were swarms of tourists. The main souvenirs appeared to be blown glass, crystal, jewelry, and for the kids wooden marionettes. Police cars seemed to be everywhere, but I never saw anything remotely criminal, and the only one I saw with sirens was going with two amubulances on the outerbelt around the city. Overall the city was very well-kept with clean streets, excellent public transit (including buses, subway, and trams!), and amazingly beautiful buildings.

There were several horse carriages in the main square of the old town district, all of them looking shiny and happy:

(the ear hats are to keep insects from entering their ears, f.y.i.)

Here is a view of the famous astronomical clock, it shows....lots of things...heh heh, but I forget what they are. Position of the moon, time, date, stuff like that. Below it is a calender disc. On the hour, a skeleton pulls a rope to ring the bell, and some doors open revealing different apostles. At twelve o'clock ALL the apostles are revealed. We saw 4pm, though. Also note the lovely police and swarms of tourists. Yes.

The large mainly-white building with the two towers was a church, whose name eludes me, but it was very amazing on the inside. Phenomenal decorations considering the small number of pews. Well. Someone had money... As for the statue, we never did figure out what it was. Rather ambiguous-looking: