Still relying on our guidebook, we took a tram to the Little Quarter of the city, behind the Castle, The photo shows the white walls of the monastery and towers capped with red or black roofs Strahov monastery where we visited two smaller attractions: the Strahov monastery and library and the Loreta church.

The monastery no longer is in its original businesses of making beer, housing travelers and tending vineyards, but it does a healthy business as a tourist attraction. Lots of people milled around in the courtyard, singly or on tours. Looking down the corridor we thought it extended quite far, but it was just some quite realistic trompe l'oeil. We looked through the door to the philosophy department library, and decided that the early illuminated books and manuscripts which were nicely displayed along the corridor were well worth seeing. Sorry we couldn't take pictures.

Then we followed the crowd to the Loreta church and walked through the cloistered garden. Again, we the grassy courtyard is surrounded by columned galleries Loreta church courtyard found statue after statue, a few decorated with touches of gold leaf. The church itself looked rather grim and heavy, with many crucifixions and lots of dark wood. Rather disappointing. In one chapel we found the weird image of the Bearded Woman, larger than life in a small chapel; she is fully dressed in a flowing dress and has a full dark beard. The story was that she was supposed to marry a cruel man so before the wedding she grew a beard and he decided not to go ahead with the marriage. Of all the many chapels, this is the only chapel where there are lit candles (quite a few) left by people reflecting on the sadness of a bad marriage.

We spotted a road sign which was unfamiliar to us. We have since seen it on the web, and learned inside a recess, the chapel has a brightly colored and decorated red wall with a small altar in front Loreta side chapel that it means "no stopping or parking." It's supposed to be an internationally recognized sign, but we aren't familiar with it in North America.

At lunch we shared pig knuckle, plus some salad and wonderful rye bread served with horseradish and mustard. For dessert they served us each a crepe with chocolate sauce and whipped cream.

Now it was getting quite hot and we were getting rather tired of churches so we walked down many, many steps past interesting houses and tacky stores to reach a tram stop. On the way we passed the U.S. Embassy, a bright red Lamborghini sports car parked next to a bar near the embassy, and two police, one with a mirror on a stick, checking (we guess) for explosives under cars. To our great amazement, the Lamborghini was parked right next to one of those "no stopping or parking" signs. We were shocked. Shocked! the circular road sign is colored blue, but with a red circle surrounding a diagonal red X.  The Czech words are MIMO VOZIDLA URADU VLADY CR No stopping or parking

We rode three tram lines from beginning to end, then came back to pick up the laundry and return to the hotel. On the way we passed a political demonstration in Wenceslaus Square which is the Prague version of Free Speech Alley. Elsa inquired and learned that the speaker was against the government.

At the hotel it was Fringe theater week. A collection of musical groups travelled from hotel to hotel for several days giving short performances. Saturday night there was a jazz group in the Hotel Maria Prag, and the following morning we saw an oboe and guitar pair playing chamber music in the breakfast room.

Sunday, 28 May, was a museum day. Having steeped ourselves in religion and art, we decided to explore the Technical Museum, which turned out to be chock full of interesting exhibits. We took the No. 26 The photo looks down several steep staircases.  Wearing a white straw hat, Bob is in the left foreground.  Groups of people are clustered around the stairs. Bob descends a steep staircase tram, which we had not taken previously, from the train station to the stop for the museum, high on the hill overlooking the Moldau (the river which flows south to north across the Czech Republic through Prague and eventually empties into the Elbe, and thence into the North Sea), which the Czechs call the Vltava.

We walked three blocks to the back of the museum, which faces a hilltop park, where we strolled and watched the dogs and their people, enjoying the panoramic views of Prague, and waiting for the museum to open.

We saw nearly all of the museum. We began with archaeology on the top floor, which showed us photos and drawings of many of the Art Nouveau buildings in the capital. Also there was a strange exhibit of a man who made odd kinds of inventions and patented them, but apparently never achieved any commercial success. The parked red convertible has the top down so passersby could look inside, as many were doing.  No driver is present, and the police just down the street are not paying any attention to the No Stopping or Parking sign. Lamborghini

Next on display was a complete TV studio, which had evidently been turned over by a local station when they modernized, so their old studio became a museum piece.

An old Van de Graaf generator extended through two floors.

On the next floor down was an exhibit about synthetics (if there was more about textiles we missed it) and chemical elements, and across the way was a display of designs and advances of household conveniences, which were stressed by the Soviets so that women could have two jobs -- in the factory during the days and at home during the nights (so the caption explained.)

Next there was an astronomy exhibit, featuring old astronomical measuring tools (Kepler stayed here a The guitarist is seated while the oboist stands next to him.  The audience is paying attention to breakfast Oboe and guitar concert while) and, what was fascinating to us, a longish documentary on the explosion in astronomical tools from earthbound light-gathering telescopes to telescopes that measured all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum from earth or outer space. The video was in English with Czech subtitles.

Printing technologies were next, and here the exhibits featured a lot of early printed pages, as the printing explosion began in Mainz and rapidly spread along trade routes. The presses were shown, too. To enter and leave this exhibit you had to thread a maze of bookshelves!

Transport was shown on the ground floor -- Planes, bicycles, one locomotive, motorcycles, and a variety of cars. The south side of the river abuts a steep hill about 150 feet in height, so the view from the hill top park is mostly the roofs of downtown Prague Roofs of downtown Prague

Also on the ground floor were exhibits of photography and horology. We were getting tired, and there were three more levels underground!

The first level was a museum cafe, which reinvigorated us to plunge deeper, to the metals and metallurgy exhibits (only a little was said about soft metals and precious metals, but much was made of iron and steel, showing the large scale hammers and crucibles used for industrial production through the ages.

Finally we descended to the mines, the pits, which were very well done, in the third sub-basement, and illustrated the development of mining from ancient times to the present (although not much was said about strip mining). The top half of the Van de Graaf generator is visible on this floor, while the rest is a floor below.  It is cylindrical in shape, with a hemispherical top.  The apparatus is exposed to view. Vand de Graaf generator

Fortunately there was an elevator which whisked us from the mine pits back up to ground level. A brief mandatory scan of the gift store and we were back on the street, still quiet in this neck of the woods on a Sunday, where we boarded the number 26 tram for a trip back to the train station and our hotel.

Prague was a different-feeling city from the others we had visited this trip -- Strasbourg, Colmar, Augsburg, Cham. Of course, the language was impenetrable, the currency was different, so we were aware that we were Away From Home. Other differences were harder to put into words. Perhaps it is because tourist Prague is more determinedly religious. The tourist literature and tours feature religious buildings and traditions -- and of course the churches are beautifully maintained (even during the hard times before the The large hall has airplanes suspended from the roof, Motorcycles on one gallery, bicycles on another, cars and trucks on the ground floor along with a railway locomotive Hall of transport Velvet Revolution, they must have kept at least some churches open).

Another noticeable difference is the presence of lots of high-energy younger people. Large groups of students and young workers throng the city, bringing music and color. We are more attuned to less crowded attractions where we can observe at our own elderly pace, so we avoided some of the most popular venues in Prague. We still found much to enjoy.

We're happy we saw for ourselves a city which has been visited and described by so many of our friends. There are many attractive sights to see here. We did not need to buy a guidebook in advance; the internet and tourist centers always provide plenty of suggestions, and of course we love the surprise of rounding a corner to a completely unexpected sight; this works better for us than planned excursions.