After our successful first explorations in Prague we started our second day with a more serious topic. First on our program were the Jewish Museum and the surrounding synagogues. Before our visit we had not known that Prague had such a long Jewish history. Our tour included the beautiful Spanish synagogue and also a centuries old Jewish cemetery. But the Jewish history of Prague is of course not complete without the Holocaust. Nowhere is this put more clearly than in the Pinkas Synagogue, where the walls are full of names (total of 80 000) of Czech and Moravian Jews who were murdered by the German Nazi government. One cannot help but wonder how the lives of those people, who at some point had led an ordinary life, would’ve turned out…
After this heavy dose of history we took the kids to the Lego museum, they had more than earned it. Of course they would’ve happily spent the rest of the day there, but at some point even they started to feel hungry so we walked a couple of minutes (it’s so awesome how close everything is here) to Las Adelitas, a legit Mexican restaurant. It was so delicious and reminded us of our trip to the states which is where we last had real Mexican food.
After lunch we had to hurry a bit to make it to the 2 p.m. tour of the the Klementinum. This is an old library with (by now) 2 million books. A part of the building is the astronomical tower which we could ascend at the end of the tour. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures in the library, but it is really worth the trip, this place just oozes history out of every nook and cranny.
All these stairs took their toll and we needed a place to sit and drink some coffee. So we found a small cafe that just happened to also sell homemade donuts to help us recharge 😆
On our way back to the hotel we passed (another) Kafka monument – you really can’t get past this guy here in Prague. Maybe time to reread some of his novels…
By now it was night so we decided to pay the brewpub U Kunštátů a visit to wind down after this eventful day. We only stayed shortly though for some sausage and beers and were back quickly in our hotel for some much needed shuteye.
