I heard about an artist in Prague who painted fanciful worlds all over the inside of a house...a house called "The Magical Cavern." According to the artist's website, these are a couple of the paintings there.
That's my boat hotel, the Florentina, on the right
Local musicians play for dinner money
This man fills water glasses with different amounts of oil, so that when they are struck, they make different sounds & he can play songs.
This is how people beg for in Prague. They stay in these supplicating positions for hours, perhaps all day. I've seen them as I come & go, the same men in the same spot, in the same exact position. They all have an expression of tremendous suffering, almost religious suffering on their faces. It's very unsettling.
Though the city centers are crowded with tourists, there's almost no one up here in winter
Prague is now tiny in the distance, shrouded in fog
It's kind of mysterious up here
Endless stairs
Yay!
These ugly chaps guarded the front door
Closed??? You're kidding, right??
By now, I believe I was losing my mind. This is a large stand of dead branches. Doesn't it look, though, like a woman with long hair, sitting in a lean-back position with her knees up?
Oh...here's an aviator...maybe he can give me directions. Ok, fine, don't say anything. Be like that. See if I care.
Suddenly I see a strangely familiar tower rising out of the fog. This tower is a great source of pride in Prague. City fathers saw the Eiffel Tower in Paris & liked it so much, they said "We want one too." They didn't have the funds for a full-size one, so they built it smaller & put it on a hill & proclaimed that the tower + the hill = a tower taller than the Eiffel Tower.
Next to it is a small building with a Maze of Mirrors. You keep banging into reflections of yourself!
Sometimes you have to just blindly follow people who seem like they know where they're going
This library has thousands of books...one whole wall contains bibles, from all periods in history, in all languages
No library has ever had a ceiling like this. I wish I could go in & lie on the floor on my back & just look up.
The artist who painted the ceiling did the entire thing in under 6 months, with the help of only one assistant.
There were so many sculptures in this church that, sorry to say, it look like a yard sale was about to commence.
Here's the neighborhood absinthe shop
Miss Absinthe
...with its charming river view from my cabin....
....& my own little glass of absinthe
I decided I want to see them, so I set out across the Vltava River to the far side of the city.
The Charles Bridge, as every day, is full of activity.
There are unsettling sights too.
Up I went, following my paper map & we all know how good I am at that. Before long the city fell away & I began climbing a snow-covered mountain. I did not realize this quest involved climbing a mountain.
Up & up, trudging up vertical hills & hundreds of stairs. By now I was thinking "this guy had better be pretty damn good." Paths petered out or crisis-crossed other paths, winding through pine trees. After an hour or more climbing that damn mountain, cold & breathless, I finally reached a cheering sign.
Oh, I thought very dark thoughts about that artist & his psychedelic paintings. My map had none of these paths & I had no sense of north, south, east or west. On & on I climbed. I did have a good sense of up & down.
More climbing, more forest. Then I saw a sign that said "Monastery." That sounds interesting, I thought, so I tried to follow the sign, but there was no evident path toward it.
Sometimes you have to just blindly follow people who seem like they know where they're going
Not only did I find a monastery, but inside I discovered a jaw-dropping library.
The monastery, of course, also had a church. It too had a soaring ceiling & a crowd of large sculptures.
Eventually I found a road & headed back down to the river. It's always easier to go down than up.
Vincent van Gogh isn't exactly a good poster boy for absinthe
Back to my floating boat hotel....
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