Praha Round Two

“What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.” ― Karl Lagerfeld

This weekend we took a “field trip” back to Prague and a trip to Dresden, Germany and it was fantastic! I had such a great time and it was nice to go back to Prague. WARNING: this blog will have a ton of pictures, I think it will be easier to write about a few of the pictures and then put them under the explanation. The pictures do not do these places justice but it will give you an idea of what I saw!

 First day, we took a mini tour around Prague. First, we went across the Charles Bridge to check out the other side of the river. One of the gates has a bunch of locks on it, and people write their names and the names of their lovers and lock it to the bridge. It is similar to the one in Paris but much smaller. Then we went to check out the John Lennon wall. I was obsessed with it. The colors were so bright and people painted sayings and quotes all over the wall. Later in the day some of us stopped for lunch at a bagel place, everything was made with bagels. My friend got bagel French toast, which is the same as normal French toast but obviously with bagels! Then we went out later that night and had some fun!

The second day we went to Praha Hrad (hehe, the Prague castle) and it was beautiful. The cathedral, St. Vitus, was absolutely gorgeous and full of stain-glass windows. You can see all the different ones below. St. Vitus is the oldest church in the Czech Republic, and still holds services today. The first picture is the outside of the cathedral and the rest are the window panels throughout the church. 

 

 

 

Here is a picture of the St. Wenceslas chapel with his tomb in it. The chapel is not open to the public and the Czech crown jewels are housed here. The jewels are only view able to the public once every eight years, and we were not lucky enough to see them!

On Sunday, we went to the Jewish Quarter. It was incrediably sad. We got to walk around the oldest Jewish Cemetery which has a bunch of tombstones. It looks like it is just on a hill but sadly, that is not a hill. There are layers of bodies buried there in a mass grave. The Jews do not allow people to move the dead once they are buried so they have been left there for years. On some of the stones there are coins and little pieces of paper containing prayers that people have left to help honor the dead. In one of the synagogues they have written the names of the Jews from Prague who died in the Holocaust. It was covered floor to ceiling in names, and was very overwhelming. It helps to put the Holocaust into perspective. Also, there was a children's art exhibit. These artworks were made from children in the concentration camps, and their teacher saved them in a suitcase and hid the suitcase in the wall. It was eventually discovered and they displayed them for the public. That was horribly sad and one of the paintings really stuck with me. The title of that section (so the assignment for the picture) was "Looking to the Future"  and one of the kids drew a picture of a skeleton and said "Death". For me that was the hardest thing to see because that showed they knew what was going to happen and they had no hope for being rescued. 

                                   

On Saturday we went to Dresden, Germany and it was very fun! I will post about that trip in a different blog because this was a lot of typing and pictures! I am loving Europe and will finish telling about this weekend in the next post!