Prague Frankfurt

  Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany
Sunday, September 7, 2008

Week 7
Our final days in Rome were well spent visiting more museums and churches and eating more Italian food. The art/artefacts in the Vatican and the painting in the Sistine Chapel (that's the 16th chapel for all those CGS folks!) was amazing. It is interesting how much wealth the Catholic Church as accumulated over the hundreds of years and when one visits the churches the amount of art in gold, sculptures, paintings, mosaics and marble is incredible.

This cross bow was the largest we had ever seen.

Large Crossbow

The view from the Castel Sant 'Angelo over Rome included this vista over St Peters Basilica and the Vatican (long square shaped buildings on the right hand side), and who could go to Rome and not visit the Trevy Fountain?

Castel Sant 'Angelo over Rome

Trevy Fountain

We left Rome after 4 days to fly to Prague for the last leg of our trip. The old city of Prague was very nice with painted buildings, old churches and clock towers - it reminded us of the German/Swiss market plazas we saw last year. The throngs of tourists from all nations were there too. The old quarter is definitely set up for tourists with souvenir shops galore all selling the same thing and a bureau de change every 100 metres. Anyway, we really enjoyed the atmosphere in Prague, it was very different to Italy and it is a place we would come back to. Whilst we were there we saw one of the 'famous' black light theatre shows and visited the Prague Castle - the big ticket venue in Prague. It is very large with many different areas to visit within the castle, although the main (gothic) cathedral is probably the best. The photo shows one of the walls in the castle where the ruling family put their crests all over the walls and ceiling.

Ruling family crests in castle

The view of Prague from the castle was very nice and this photo is from the King Wenceslas vineyard at the castle.

King Wenceslas vineyard at the castle

The bridge is the famous Charles bridge where there is wall to wall tourists and market stalls with local artists selling their artworks.

Charles bridge

The last photo shows Michael with the falconer we met on our last day in Prague. She was really interesting to chat to (very good English) and provided excellent information on the birds she had there and falconing in general. She hopes to get a full time job at one of the airports where falconers are in demand as a natural deterrent for other smaller birds.

Michael with falconer

So now we are at Frankfurt on our way home. We have had a fabulous trip and everything went very smoothly. We have had some wonderful experiences and seen lots of beautiful things along the way. We hope you have enjoyed sharing our trip with us and we thank you for coming aboard. For those of you who asked for more photos this trip - we hope you liked the ones we posted!