Last Day in Prague

Our last full day in Prague. We had a late night parting the night before and a very early morning excursion but this was the one I was excited for!

We did a similar excursion in Italy and loved it too.

This was an awesome city bike tour to the Vysehrad Castle.

We stopped for photo ops along the way - including here along the Charles River.

But it's all fun and games until someone gets stopped by the Polizia!

Before we left on our trip I was told to make sure you stay away from the police, so I was surprised to come up the big steep hill to see Jason stopped by one.

I guess our tour guides didn't get the permit to ride in the park (too close to kids and a school). We had all just come up a big steep hill and were separated from the front of our group. Jason stopped to wait for me and the rest of the group to make sure we knew where to go. We had three guides, on leading, one in the middle who pulled away from Jason, and then one at the back. The police saw Jason stopped and started taking to him and asked if he spoke Czech. He shook his head and said no and pointed in the direction of the tour guide. So off he took after her.

We sat there and waited until they got everything squared away but here's the kicker. We had just made it up a steep hill and got to the nice flat park and were told we had to walk while we were in the park. Ugh!

At least the view was gorgeous. But we had to walk the entire way around the park instead of riding.

Oh, and there's the cop pointing talking to our tour guide in the orange. She got a big fat fine!

We stopped here in the park for lunch and some pictures.

There's the cop again. LOL

It made my heart skip a beat to sit up here but Jason really wanted this picture.

The we came to the castle and took a bit of a break to look around.

Jason took lots of pictures while I stayed with a few in the group to chit chat.

Then we rode back toward town and stopped here at the John Lennon Wall across the street from the French Embassy.

Here is the history behind the wall:

Lennon was a hero to the pacifist youth of Central and Eastern Europe during the totalitarian era. Prior to 1989 when communism ruled, western pop songs were banned by Communist authorities, and especially John Lennon´s songs, because it was praising freedom that didn’t exist here. Some musicians were actually jailed for playing it!

When John Lennon was murdered in 1980 he became a sort of hero to some of the young and his picture was painted on this wall, for whatever reason right here, along with graffiti defying the authorities. Don’t forget that back then the Czech people had few opportunities to express their feelings with their lack of freedom. By doing this, those young activists risked prison for what authorities called “subversive activities against the state”.

But the threat of prison couldn’t keep people from slipping there at night to scrawl graffiti first in the form of Beatles lyrics and odes to Lennon, then they came to paint their own feelings and dreams on the wall.

The Communist police tried repeatedly to whitewash over the portrait and messages of peace but they could never manage to keep the wall clean. On the second day it was again full of poems and flowers with paintings of Lennon. Even the installation of surveillance cameras and the posting of an overnight guard couldn’t stop the opinions from being expressed.

The Lennon Wall represented not only a memorial to John Lennon and his ideas for peace, but also a monument to free speech and the non-violent rebellion of Czech youth against the regime. It was a small war of Czech people against the communist police who cleaned the wall.

I found this to be very relevant to what's been happening in the US.

After we got back from our ride we showered and had a couple hours until our final party so we headed back out to do some last minute shopping and site seeing. We found this cool bar down a very narrow flight of stairs. The have a light at the top and the bottom telling you when you could go up or down, since there is no way you could squeeze around anyone if you met them half way!

We found this bridge over a canal that had locks on in like in Paris.

The we headed back over the Charles Bridge, which is a stone Gothic bridge that connects Old Town and Lesser Town. Baroque statues began to be placed along either side of Charles Bridge in the 17th century. Now many of them are copies. The most popular statue is probably the one of St. John of Nepomuk, a Czech martyr saint who was executed during the reign of Wenceslas IV by being thrown into the Vltava from the bridge. The plaque on the statue has been polished to a shine by countless people having touched it over the centuries. Touching the statue is supposed to bring good luck and ensure your return to Prague.

I wish I had taken more photos of this last night Finale Party. It was held at St. Agnes Convent and it was GORGEOUS! We started the evening in the garden with drinks and passed appetizers, then moved inside the convent for dinner, dessert, drinks and entertainment.