Touring Europe allows you to see great art, history, architecture; experience new cultures and try new foods; hear new music and speak new languages; gain a greater understanding of the human condition. Then you hand the guidebook over to Matthew….

Today was the first day of the Czechia trip on which I was in charge of what we got to do; Mer and I split up vacation days so that we each take turns planning things (or winging things, in my case). My first day on the job was made happily harder in that it was supposed to rain, and it didn’t (other than a brief shower as we walked from a tram stop to a church). Good problem to have, but it required some midday modifications to the itinerary, which had been indoor-intensive.

We took a new (to us) tram to the Little Quarter, which is the area right below the castle. As we got off the tram, it started to rain, so we headed for the Church of St. Nicholas to tour the inside out of the weather. It was on my rainy-day list anyway, and it was a good stop. The inside of the church is as Baroque as I have seen anywhere. The Baroque era was (roughly) from 1600 to 1750, and involved elaborate, over-the-top decorations. In the case of St. Nicholas, it meant almost every surface was covered with decoration – it was almost hard to take in. My brochure from the church had a great line in it that made us laugh out loud, even as we tried to be quiet in a church – “The elemental lack of restraint in the individual elements is typical of the architect.” Quite so.

We looked around the church for a time and discovered we could go up to the gallery, where we could see the higher decorations more easily, as well as ten large paintings from the life of Christ. Mer loved the viewpoint, but I could not get near the edge to see things well. As we were about to leave, I asked the man at the door if the crypt was open. He looked confused and asked if I knew German. Since I did not, I left, much to the disappointment of Mer, who wanted to see me mime “crypt.”

By this time, it had stopped raining, so we walked down toward the river, going down and under the Charles Bridge, onto Kampa Island, which is full of shops and restaurants and is quite pretty once you get away from the bridge area, and it even includes a large working waterwheel. As we were walking through the park on the island, we heard marching band music – a full band arrangement of the pop song “Happy.” Of course, we had to investigate. It turned out to be the Copenhagen Show Band, touring around and playing in the park today. They did not march, but they did have a few dancers, and the band was very active in playing (swaying or waving instruments around), and they seemed to be having a great time. We stayed until they stopped playing, which was about ten minutes (which included a Disney-movie medley). It was a “happy” stroke of travel luck to stumble on them.

We headed over to the river to get yet another perspective on the city, and we noticed the river lock guide was decorated by a dozen yellow light-up penguins. As one has, of course. We struck up a friendly conversation with an older couple from Scotland, and the husband had been in the United States a few times, including Maine. He said he had the best blueberry pie he had ever had there. That pleased me very much – a little hometown pride.

From Kampa, we walked toward the castle hill, with my having the idea to take the funicular up the hill to save walking. But there was a huge line for the ride, so instead we went to look at the Monument to Victims of Communism. It is made of a series of statues on stairs; men who get progressively thinner and lose limbs as they get higher up the stairs, until there is nothing left. It is well done.

After lunch, we walked and took a tram up to the Wallenstein Garden and Palace. Wallenstein was a man who made a ton of money in the Thirty Years’ War in the 1600s, and he build this huge estate where the Czech Senate now meets. The grounds are open for free, and today part of the palace was as well. There are fountains and shrub-lined paths, and peacocks roam freely. There is a large artificial grotto wall that is kind of creepy looking with dripping rock formations, and an owlery. The palace main hall is huge, only topped in size by the Prague Palace hall, and it is now used for concerts and lectures. A few other rooms were open as well, but the hall was the main showpiece.

We used the subway to get back to Wenceslas Square, where we headed toward the Mucha Museum. As we got close, of course I veered into the Senses Museum instead. The museum is small, but fun, full of displays that trick your senses and mess with your head, including a spinning tunnel that makes you think a stationary walkway is moving, and a forced-perspective room that makes one of you look much bigger than normal. It was a good time, if not exactly high-brow culture.

When we came out, the day continued to be nice, so I improvised and took the subway back to the gardens area, where we then walked and walked and walked over the river and past the Charles Bridge and all the way over close to the National Theater. Later, Mer gently pointed out that we took the subway to a far point to walk back to a point that was only about ten minutes from where we had started. Oooops.

But we did get on the Vltava River. We rented a paddleboat for an hour, and we circled Strelecky Ostrov island and then sat quietly on the river looking at the Charles Bridge and surrounding area. We do like to see cities from the water when we can, even if it involves some unnecessary walking.

Having learned my lesson, we walked back the direct way, grabbing supper along the way. We got back to the square around 7:30, in time to buy tickets for the 8:00 showing of Srnec Theater’s black light show. Black light shows are a Prague art form in which black lights are used to highlight props that are then “magically” moved about by stagehands dressed in black. The founder of the Srnec Theater came up with the idea in the 1960s, and the show tonight was comprised of a series of ten-minute long skits involving lots of things floating and flying. There was a western-based one with a trotting horse, and a magician causing things to zoom about, and a woman hanging laundry that moved, and a fish that became a mermaid and back again, and other shows. It was brilliant fun – the skits were clever and funny, and the illusion was almost perfect (you could occasionally see a black-covered hand or arm if it got too close to the normal light). It may not have been the ballet, but it was a great time all the same.

We headed back home for the evening having put in our last full day in Prague for this trip. Tomorrow we head out into the rest of the country, which will hopefully be a different kind of museum of the senses.