At the end of our Sunday morning tour of Mala Strana we arrived at the Charles Bridge, which spans the Vltava River from Mala Strana to the Old Town of Prague.
While writing this post, I learned that my lifelong friend Charles (Chuck) Mattox had passed away in Bend, Oregon. I had known Chuck for over 60 years, since we met in 1960 while we were both at Long Beach State College (now California State University at Long Beach). After graduating from college and serving in the army, he had moved to Oregon for graduate study at the University of Oregon in Eugene, where he met Elouise Foiles; they were married in 1965, and I served as best man at their wedding. Since then we had remained in touch. I visited them in Bend whenever I could, and after Sandie and I were married in 2002, we had taken several fabulous trips along with Chuck and Elouise to view solar eclipses. A few years before, Chuck and Elouise had taken a Danube cruise very much like ours, and Chuck had stood on the Charles Bridge, just as I did on the morning of June 25, 2023. This post is dedicated to his memory.
In my last post I mentioned the Judith Bridge, which was built in 1172 and which was protected by a chain associated with the Church of Our Lady under the Chain; in 1342 that bridge was wrecked by a flood, and construction on a new bridge began in 1357, in the reign of Charles IV. The new bridge was called the Stone Bridge at first, but since 1870 it has been known as the Charles Bridge. Instead of a chain, the bridge was protected by towers, two on the Mala Strana side and one on the Old Town side. It was completed in 1402.
The Charles Bridge is 516 meters (1,693 feet) long and nearly 10 metres (33 feet) wide. Thirty sculptures line its sides, replicas of originals mostly erected from the late 17th through the 19th centuries. I tried to photograph them all; I did not succeed and got lost in the process, but I did shoot most of them. I won’t try the patience of the reader by presenting all of those I did shoot on this page, but I will show a few of the best.
It was a sunny (and hot) Sunday in June, and as one might expect, the bridge was packed with tourists like us. It was hard to get an unobstructed picture of anything, but I did my best.
In fact, I became so absorbed in taking pictures that by the time I came to the Old Town end of the bridge, I had lost touch with my tour group. I looked around for a few minutes and when I didn’t see any of them, I thought they must have left me behind. I didn’t know which way they had gone, so I just went straight ahead on Karlova (Charles) Street, which comes off the bridge. After a few blocks I hadn’t found them, so I turned back and returned to the bridge tower. It turned out that they were all there, looking for me.
So again I set off, this time together with the tour group, down Karlova Street through the Old Town of Prague. First we had to pass through Crusader Square (Křižovnické náměstí), so named because the monastery of the crusading order of the Knightly Order of the Crusaders with the Red Star, along with its associated Baroque church of St. Francis of Assisi, borders the north side of the square. Another Baroque church, that of St. Salvator, stands on the east side of the square, and on the south side is the historic and imposing Colloredo-Mansfeld Palace, formerly a residence for aristocratic families. In the middle of the square is a neo-Gothic monument to King and Emperor Charles IV, unveiled in 1851.
Karlova Street proved to be a touristy shopping district, not as high-end and snooty as Paris Street, which we had seen the day before, but more lively and affordable.
At 4 Karlova Street we passed a house where the astronomer Johannes Kepler lived from 1607 to 1612, while he was Court Astronomer to Emperor Rudolf II.
Karlova Street is full of inviting boutiques, cafes, pubs and other establishments, too numerous to catalogue. Again I could not help but marvel at how American-oriented (or Anglo-oriented, same difference) Prague has become. Many of the names and signs on the shops were in English: there was the Mad Rabbit ice-creamery, the Golden Crown jeweler, a Local Artists gallery, the Duck Boutique and my favorite, the Fat Cat pub, which had a sign (in English) advertising “Husband Day Care”.
Karlova Street twists and winds tortuously for several blocks through the heart of Old Town Prague before ending at Malé náměstí, “Little Square,” which is an adjunct to Old Town Square to its east.
Thus it was that at the end of our walking tour of Mala Strana, our Gate1 group ended up in Old Town Square, the same place where we had finished the previous day’s tour. So I had another chance to shoot some scenes in this amazing place, of which I couldn’t get enough, and I experienced a somewhat different perspective of it than on the first day. Most notably, on Sunday there was a major demonstration against the Chinese Communist Party, with placards reading “Chinese Communism is evil!”, “NO to Chinese gulags!” and “400 million Chinese quit the Communist Party!” I doubt whether the demonstrators caused much dismay for Xi Jin-ping, but I was impressed by their fervor.
Our Gate1 tour group disbanded in Old Town Square, and we were free to go our separate ways; I took the option of walking back to the Cosmopolitan Hotel to rest up and get ready for the final adventure of our visit to Prague, which was in store for Sunday afternoon.