Sept 25, more Prague + Sychrov Castle

Albino peacock at Wallenstein Castle

We headed back into the center of Prague, but to the opposite side of the river from yesterday. We started out in Wallenstein Castle, which is now the Czech Republic Senate building. Wallenstein was a general under Emperor Ferdinand II who got a bit full of himself after a number of victories and built sort of a mini Versailles. Ferdinand got tired of his airs and had him assassinated. We saw a pair of peacocks tamely wandering the ground, one of which was an albino.

From there we walked to the Infant of Prague Church and I found I am already about churched out. We continued on to side streets and found the Lennon wall -- a spontaneous and continuous grafitti project focusing on some of John Lennon's writing (like Imagine) that sprang up when he was killed. The Communists tried painting it over, but it quickly got redecorated. The artists called themselves "Lennonists" which undoubtedly made old Vladimir Illitch roll over in his grave a few times.

Before walking over the famous Charles Bridge (pedestrians only now), we had crepes for lunch -- mine was chicken and spinach and Jim got ham and cheese and we split a raspberry one for dessert. It was yummy, but lots more food than we anticipated. By the time we got done (speedy service is not an apparent hallmark here), we were short on time to do some planning for Thursday AND get back to the hotel for our afternoon trip to Sychrov Castle. We hustled over the bridge and will go back to REALLY see it tomorrow and raced to the Municipal House, a famous Art Nouveau building to validate when English language tours are available and when the box office opens because tickets are only available the same day and apparently sell out. Then it was back to the hotel for a brief rest before our bus ride.

Late this afternoon, we headed north for over an hour to Sudetenland, an unofficial area of Bohemia that was largely settled by Germans in the last century and was annexed early by Hitler as he began expanding Germany before WWII. Sychrov Castle was owned by French nobility, the Rohans, who fled France after the revolution there, and they lost their castle after WWII because they were strongly suspected of being Nazi collaborators, which justified the property seizure by the state. The fact that the Soviets took over in 1948 probably also encouraged their move to Austria.

The castle looks much more like a large chateau and was beautifully decorated to look like someone had just stepped away. There were wood carvings all over -- the Rohans more than doubled the size of the original building and hired a wood carver who spent full time for 40 years working on balustrades, doors, ceilings, walls, etc.

Elaborate hand-carved ceiling

Wood staircase carved from a single log

They also had a private chapel built and a local organist played a short concert on it - really quite impressive. Then we walked the extensive grounds (140 acres still left: when it was 7 times bigger, it sported 1200 varieties of trees and plants) to get to the onsite restaurant for dinner, which was quite good. In fact all our meals here have been tasty and many were quite creative, better than we had been led to expect. Dinner was followed by the drive back to the hotel and collapse.