Prague Day 3

Today we walked all over Prague. We climbed up some towers. We saw some old stuff. And some synagogues.

Tim got up at 4:45 to try to see the Charles Bridge without tourists. he mostly succeeded.

After breakfast, we went up the tower in the Old Town Hall.

Then we went up the tower at the end of Charles Bridge.

Then we walked across Charles Bridge with the throngs of tour groups.

Some graffiti ("je suis ceux que je suis" ... "I am what I am"

We walked past the National Theater.

After lunch we stopped by this rotating sculpture of Franz Kafka's head:

And then past the hanging statue of Sigmund Freud:

We took a detour to see the statue of a Girl with a Paper Swallow:

Before heading into the Jewish Quarter, where we were initially greeted by another status of Franz Kafka:

We saw the primary sights in the Jewish Quarter, but most notably the Spanish Synagogue:

This is the exterior of the Ceremonial Hall (the primary ceremony being a funeral):

This Torah scroll (and Torah pointer) were in the Klaus Synagogue:

Inside the Pinkas Synagogue, all of the walls are covered with names of Bohemian victims of the Holocaust:

From here, we visited the Jewish cemetery. There were 100,000 people buried in this very small space; there is only room for about 12,000 gravestones, and very cluttered at that.

After we cleaned up (it's very hot!), Cora and I visited the public spaces and underground of the Old Town Hall (the Mayor had been hosting an event during the earlier periods of the day). Most notably, we learned about the three styles of the city's coat of arms. The baroque style:

The gothic style:

And the modern style (the current coat of arms):