Eiffel Tower Webcam

http://www.abcparislive.com/eiffel_tower_cam3.htm

Can you see Nan-Jan & J ?

M

Warwick Castle - UK

N & I had a fantastic day out discovering Warwick Castle.
Warwick

We scaled each tower,up their spiral stairways, and walked the ramparts (yes, the legs were sore the next day!).We visited the eerie dungeon of the castle dating back to C14th. You could see where prisoners had etched into the stone walls while being imprisoned. Examples of the chains and a metal suit(for a really serious offence a measured metal suit was made to hold a body on display while it rot)hung from the ceiling. N was particularly grossed-out with that and the torture chamber, with its scarey ghostly sound effects that made us jump (it is owned by Tassauds after all!).
The State rooms included period pieces of furniture, paintings, photographs, fixtures and decorations - including silk tapestry wall paper or in the Queen Anne bedroom, vibrant coloured tapestries originally treated with urine to prevent the colours from running;the Warwick Trophy of a horseman slaying a huge cow, along with a huge cow/whale rib bone, is one of the legends of the castle(apparently a cow was raised that was milked so much it grew to twice normal size, sick of being milked it went beserk and was slaughtered).

Tassauds has fashioned two areas of the castle with waxwork dioramas and they were brilliant:
1.Kingmaker - with stables, (this freaked N out as the horse moved its ears,eyes and swished its tail and it looked soooooo real she refused to have a picture taken anywhere near it)blacksmiths, armoury, seamstress all preparing for 'the War of the Roses'in 1470.




2.A Royal Weekend Party,1898 - recreating a weekend party for the Prince of Wales using photographs from that time.

Mother & Son

M and Nan-Jan's jaunts.

In between working hours we've been doing............

• Red Baron & somewhere in Prague 1 restuarants
• Hung out at Coffee Heaven, Sicilia (local pizza place), Lavka (see picture) and the local pub around the corner
• Petrin Hill (http://www.pragueexperience.com/places.asp?PlaceID=604)

Nan-Jan has visited

• Mucha Museum
• Kampa Island
• Museum of Decorative Arts
• All the shops on Wencelas Square without success

M snuck away between creating work presentations on Saturday to go to 'Star Wars III - Revenge of the Sith'.

N&J return from London tomorrow morning.

Nan-Jan & J prepare to go to Paris at the end of the week leaving M&N to enjoy McDonalds & all the icecream we can eat :-)

M

Harry Potter Weekend

Last Friday evening M caught up with N&J at Mardi and Ross's Cambridge apartment. Cambridge is about 45 minutes from Kings Cross station in London city - 17 pounds one way :-(
Spent the evening drinking wine smuggled in from the Czech Republic & reminiscing about old times and how much the poms get up our noses. It was really great to sit down with some Aussies and not worry about words lost in translation.

Saturday arrived. Dieter met us in Cambridge in the Audi. M&J hitched a lift headed off to London town leaving N to play with Jack & May on the manicured lawns behind the apartment - great football pitch.

M showed J all the sites posted in the previous blog entry plus we walked down Picadilly, saw Trafalgar square, had bangers & mash in old pub and managed to get caught up in 'Gumball3000' rally (http://www.gumball3000.com/content/html/index.html). We headed back to Cambridge via 9 & 3/4 station (Harry Potter fans should know this) at Kings Cross. On arrival M and Ross went out to 'Kingdom and Heaven' while the girls nattered.

Sunday was another magical spring day. How lucky were we :-) We all went walking through the 'common' to get to the Cambridge colleges to do some punting (see picture). Very relaxing especially when your not the person on the pole. Slow boat past Kings & Trinity colleges enjoying the historical commentary by our guide. Wandered around the town, then Mardi took us inside Kings & Trinity because she has special powers being a 'fellow' of Cambridge.



Sunday afternoon M caught the express train to Stansted and flew back home to Prague only to arrive to find that Czech Republic was playing Canada in the Worldcup final. Everyone in Prague is a fanatical ice hockey fan, even the driver. Fastest trip I've done from the airport to the apartment, speeds up to 150km/h. Managed to get upstairs to see the final period. Czechs won, score was 3-0. Special office buzz on Monday morning.............

J is still in London planning our European vacation in August to Normandy. Hiring a villa for 7-10 days with Mardi & Ross and hiring a people mover for all of us to storm the French beaches.

M

Monopoly Town

Picadilly, Pall Mall, Whitechapel.........you get the drift.
Stay with me. Flew into Stansted with Czechs all round.

Made it to the hotel on Kensington overlooking Hyde Park. Put on the suit and went to our LON office - very nice. Cut school early and went sight seeing:
- Big Ben
- The Abbey
- Parliament House
- Number 10 Downing St
- The Queens pad (Vienna has better palaces))
- The Tower & Bridge
All in 2 hours.

Took a bench seat and watched the world go by. Then 'Dobre den' the family sitting on the bench seat next to me were on the same plane I flew in on. 6 degrees of separation.

Currently down 'The Greyhound' having a pint getting ready for the Man United vs Chelsea game. Czech beer is better.

Off to the countryside tomorrow. Tootle's, ta ta.........

M

Inside the Royal Palace

On the same entry ticket for 220Kc we could also enter the Royal Palace. Dating from 1135 it is one of the oldest parts of the castle. It was the seat of Bohemian princes but from the 13th to the 16th century it was the king's palace.
Vladislav Hall, in the centre of the palace, was used for markets, banquets, councils, coronations and in bad weather, jousting.During jousting matches the horses would enter from the far left hallway(dark shadowed archway on the left).To the right through the windows you look down onto the Little Quarter, St Nicholas, and in the distance Vysehrad's 'St Peters and St Pauls Church' and then as far as the day allows.

The Rider's staircase with the slopping stairs lead directly, through the curtains at the top, into the Vladislav Hall

Up some winding stone stairs to the left of the hall is the New Land Rolls. The walls and the ceilings of these rooms are painted with the crests of the clerks who worked there from 1561 to 1774 and was the old map repository for land titles.

Also to the left of the Hall is the medieval parliaments, Thrown Room. The room included portraits, one being Maria Theresa as can be seen in the second photo.

Inside St Vitus Cathedral

The St Vitus Cathedral stands inside the courtyard of the Prague Castle. Anyone can enter St Vitus Cathedral without a charge, but to stroll around the alter, its chapels and the crypt costs money (and if you want to take pictures you are charged 30Kc extra). Yesterday NanJan and I spent the money and here are some of the shots, including the Mucha window below.
Detail of Mucha window

Examples painted glass/stained-glass windows



St John (always recognisable in Prague with five stars around his head)

Chapel

Rose window

Looking towards the Alter

Back of Alter

Example of frescoes

VE day re-enactment in Vinohrady

We got there a little late so we couldn't see much. Pictures aren't very good..but you get the idea. It was very loud! It started raining just after the tank turned the corner, so we walked home. N was very concerned that the men being shot and taken away on stretchers were really hurt...sorry no pictures of that.

The Bone Church

Just out of Kutna Hora is Sedlec and its infamous 'All Saints Cemetery Church'. The site of the church has been a place of pilgrimage since the C13th when the abbot returned from Jerusalem and scattered a handful of earth from 'the grave of the Lord'. During the plague 30,000 people were buried there and thousands more as a result of the Hussite battles around the town. The church was built at the end of the C14th. In 1511 the monks exhumed around 40,000 people and piled them into pyramids inside the church...and if you think that is macabre, you aint heard nothing yet...
When the Schwarzenbergs purchased the property in the 1870's they commissioned a wood carver to redecorate using the bones...pictures speak a thousand words...
Piece de resistance.. as you descend the stairs from the entrance you are confronted by the chandelier. The angled sides to the roof are open jaws, some still with teeth!

The goblets are inset into the walls of the stairs

The pyramids of bones are placed in the four corner chaples of the church, note the artist has signed his work to the right - 1870 J Rint z Ceske skole(from Czech school)

Bone Pyramid close up

NanJan wondering what to make of it all

Column under the chandelier....the cupids are a later addition

Kutna Hora

Last Wednesday NanJan and I travelled 1 hour east to the old silver mining town of Kutna Hora. In the C14th it was the second largest town in Bohemia, after Prague, supplying one third of European Silver.

Sites of Kutna Hora:
Cathedral of Saint Barbora (patron saint of miners)
Built over 500 years, completed in 1905. The progress depended on the prosperity of the miners, as it was largely constructed under their patronage, who wanted their own religious autonomy seperate from the Sedlec Monastery(see next entry).
The main nave was begun in 1388 and is vaulted differently to the rest of the church. The frescoes in this area also date back to the late 1300 - early 1400's and include the patron's family and the Arrival of the Queen of Saba. The painted stained glass windows(like those of St Vitus) are dated early 1900's and are stunning.
The work stopped on the cathedral for over 70 years until after the Hussite Wars, starting to build again in 1482. Construction progressed in French Renaissance style including the latest in vaulted ceilings. The frescoes on these walls depict mining and the medieval striking of coins. The statues included the miners in traditional miners clothes (white robes with leather ties that extend down the backside so that the miner could slide into the mines). All the walls, including the columns, show remnants of being painted.

Jesuit College and Sculptures with St Barbora in background

St James Church from Jesuit College



St James

Cruise on the Vltava

Sunday was such a hot day we decided to take a cruise on the river. Every day (even in winter) four people stand at the foot of Charles Bridge donned in sailor uniforms trying to persuade tourists to take a 45 minute cruise around the environs of Charles Bridge and Troja. So we did the tourist thing...for $15/7AUD we received a beer/soft drink and cake/ice cream and were enlightened on the history and places of interest along the Vltava.

Our enthusiastic young captain was a treasure trove of interesting information. N asked him about the seals that escaped the zoo during the 2002 floods and he was able to tell us all about them. Apparently Prague Zoo’s ONLY MALE seal “Gaston” drifted 400km along the Elbe until finally being rescued in Wittenberg in Central Germany - the Czech’s had to organize visas to cross the boarder to follow him. Unfortunately he died from exhaustion and internal injuries on the return journey. But 10 months later, on June 4, the keepers at Prague Zoo were very surprised when Gaston's female companion, Bara, gave birth to a female pup, Abeba. Isn’t that an amazing story! Abeba is now the Prague Zoo mascot.