Walking, Hills, and More Walking
Trip Start
Jun 28, 2008
1
17
36
Trip End
Aug 01, 2008
Prague,
Czech Republic
Thursday, July 10, 2008
So I headed for the Castle, which is at the top of this MASSIVE hill. (Paula, If you are reading this, I promise my legs are getting an amazing workout!!) My quads still burn today from the walk up the hill yesterday. Along the way to the Castle I took time to see the Wallenstein Garden. Really beautiful, and I wish I had left a lot more time for this because I really wanted to sit and sketch. I also tried to take some pictures with me in them, but my "hold the camera out in front of you" skills are just not very good. After a lot more walking up more STEEP hills, I got to the castle. I first went to the National Gallery sections. Both of which had 17th-19th century art. Not quite what I was looking for. It was at this point that I went to one of the gift shops, found a guide book, and figured out that the Modern Art collection was in a whole other part of the city. Once that got solved, I walked around and saw the rest of the castle. The spirit of Mike intervened at this point (I must have been taking too many pictures and not just seeing things) since as I went into the Cathedral, my camera battery died and I was unable to take pictures for the rest of the day.
After the Castle (which in retrospect I took too much time at since it didn't leave me with enough for the modern art) I headed on another long walk to the National Gallery Modern Art Collection which is in the northern part of the city. (The Castle is in the western part of the city.) To my pleasant surprise, aside from the permanent collection, they also had the International Triennale of Contemporary Art 2008 (ITCA 2008) as well as the Diplomanti AVU 2008. The ITCA had some absolutely incredible work by a number of current artists, and the Diplomanti exhibition had a piece by a painter that reminded me a lot of my own work and was just amazing to stare out. I only had about 2 1/2 hrs there which was absolutely not enough time, and I ended up having to just rush through the extensive amount of French artists in the permanent collection. I am definitely going to have to come back here to stare at this stuff more. One of the highlights of the permanent collection is "The Virgin" by Klimt. I have always like Klimt, but felt that his pieces were sometimes flat looking. Well, I just hadn't seen it in person. SOOOOO AMAZING!!! Texture and emotional. Just Stunning! I think I have "I can't wait to get home and paint" written all through my sketch book from walking around at this gallery. Next time, I will certainly start here!
The museum closed at 6pm, so I took off for another long walk back to the hostel, where after a brief nap, I met up with Drew, Andrew, and Ashley. We relaxed at the hostel for a while, resting our legs and since no one else seemed to either be hungry or want to make any decisions, I got a sandwich for dinner from across the street. Ultimately, the four of us, along with Adam (a guy from the hostel that we hung out with last night) decided to try to go meet my friend Alice for a drink, but by the time we got our butts in gear, she was leaving. She met us just long enough to direct us to another bar since the one she left was full. This bar would have been really cool since it was in a gallery space, but nothing was up in the gallery at the time, and the place was pretty empty. (Probably due to the fact it was a Wednesday.) We got a round just to sit and chill and I discovered a new drink I like, Mango Finlandia Vodka and 7-up (they didn't have Coke products.)
From here we left in search of a new location and basically walked around until we heard a lot of noise. We followed the noise and came upon a club called M1. The crowd was pretty international (a lot of English speakers) and lots of good dancing music, this is where we stayed for the rest of the night. Being the idiot I am, after a long day of walking up hills, I decided it would be a bright idea to do a lot of dancing, and basically use Ashley as my personal dance pole. (yes, I am feeling the results of that today. Glad I brought my knee braces!) To make a long evening into a short story, I will just give the new bullets: 1) We met some cool guys from the Canadian track team. 2) Andrew met a girl who he went home with (he hasn't turned up at the hostel yet, to our annoyance since Drew had to pack up all of his shit.) 3) I met an Air Force guy named Dave who was in town for a few days to help with safety coverage during the protest that I mentioned in my previous entry. He is in charge of one of the bomb sniffing dogs and was kind enough to let me crash at his really posh hotel. (Thanks to Drew for his keen negotiating skills.)
So now its about 12:30pm and we need to head out of hostel around 4/4:30pm to go to the train station. Drew, Ashley, and I are going to try to head into town to see the Mucha Museum. Hopefully Andrew will show up in time to carry his own bag to the train station.
