Boff and I did Prague Castle, and when I said 'did' I mean we bought the 'long visit' tickets, which suggested the various attractions would take about three hours to see. Five hours later we'd seen The Princely Collections, St Vitus Cathedral, Old Royal Palace, The Story of Prague Castle museum, St George's Basilica, Golden Lane with Daliborka Tower, Prague Castle Picture Gallery, Powder Tower, and Rosenberg Palace.
I liked Golden Lane, which showed how people used to live on the castle grounds, including a tavern, a goldsmith's workshop and the houses of a fortune-teller and a film buff.
The rest was all worthwhile to varying degrees. I found The Princely Collections of great interest. It traces the family tree of the Lobkowicz branch who owned the castle, which they then lost to nationalism during Russian occupation, and then which they later regained after the Velvet Revolution. The audio tour was narrated by the American descendant of the Lobkowiczes, who now lives in Prague to look after the collection. His father used to live in the palace and had to flee the country during the Russian occupation, hence junior's upbringing in the States.
The influence of the Lobkowiczes can't be understated. Lobkowicz VII paid Beethoven an annuity, which allowed the composer to create his own works rather than under the patronage system where he would have had to take commissions from said patron. This meant that Beethoven had the freedom to do whatever he liked, which in some ways you could say revolutionised music. 'Eroica', originally written for Napoleon, was thus dedicated to Lobkowicz VII.
Photo of the day is one of the rooms in the Old Royal Palace decorated in the heraldry of the castle's previous owners. I suspect one of them started doing it and the rest felt compelled to add their own generation's mark.
After leaving the castle we wandered down to the Old Town square and saw the Astronomical Clock (it does stuff on the hour and when I say 'does stuff', I mean a bunch of figurines roll around on a lazy susan above the clock—quite an anti-climax, actually).
There was a gallery with a Mucha and a Dali exhibition. The ticket seller wouldn't sell us tickets because, she said, it would take us one hour to see each exhibition. Not to worry, we assured her, we have 45 minutes until close, we will just see (local boy) Mucha and go through quickly. But apparently that wasn't good enough and we couldn't convince her to let us in. Honestly, bureacracy has a lot to answer for.
We took a walk through Old Town past the colourful synagogue, which was lovely in the dusky light. All the synagogues I've seen thus far in my life, admittedly not many but certainly more than 10, have been pretty drab so this was a welcome aesthetic addition to my understanding.
Our dinner waiter tried to rip us off by claiming we owed 1000kr, when the bill actually came to 750kr, then when he didn't accept card he suggested that we pay him 48 euro, which was way over the going rate. Instead I darted across the street in the rain to the exchange bureau and swapped some AUD for a really poor rate (if you change $50, the rate is 25% lower than if you change $300 apparently—ergh) but still better than 48 euro. We put 750kr on the table and left.
Then there was a lot of waiting around for our 4.29am train to Berlin, which was marred by the fact that the train station closed until 3.15am and then the train came in 45 mins late. I've never tried sleeping outside a train station before, but managed to grab 30 minutes sleep. Not quite vagrancy but a tiny taste of what it must be like.
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