Day 40. What are all the toruists looking at?

We arrived in Prague at about 2pm. We have had a great deal of fun getting around European cities on various forms of public transport, trains, trams, buses, subways, the underground and metros. Again we conquered the metro and found our way via Pavlova Station to our accommodation. What Lonely Planet described as a ‘Boutique Hostel’, Miss Sophie’s presented itself as a lovely place to stay. It was neat and clean and to make it even more attractive they offered us a 30% discount as they were doing some renovations and warned us that there might be a little noise. There was no noise (it was the weekend) but we were very grateful for the discount. Again we enjoyed a really nice one-bedroom apartment with bathroom and kitchen.

After the mandatory visit to the supermarket and the debate over milk (it’s hard enough buying milk in a foreign language let alone deciding between full fat, low fat, skim, soy, organic and a few others we did not understand) we headed down town to take our first look at Prague.

As we battled the Friday night crowds in the Old Town we discovered a particularly oversized crowd of tourists staring at an old 70 metre high clock tower waiting for the clock to chime at 7pm. We then noticed that many of the marauding crowd were poised with cameras at the ready, obviously expecting something exciting to happen. We waded into the mob; camera poised! On the hour, a skeleton rattled a lamp that he was carrying, the clock chimed, the doors above the clock face opened and twelve bowing wooden apostles passed by, the astronomical apparatus did something, the crowd cheered and of course we all took pictures. Only later did we realise this clock has been doing the very same trick, every hour, for about 600 years.

Wow Europe is a cool place!