Prague, Afternoon of Day 2

  OK, we're going to zip right along, because I'm tired of doing this.  After the changing of the guard, I continued my walking tour past some more beautiful buildings:

  A moment of respect for perhaps the most personally meaningful sight I saw in Prague:

  That humble abode once housed both Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler.  Those are the guys who established, through painstaking observations and brilliant mathematical deduction, that the earth does indeed go around the sun, as Copernicus had proposed some while earlier, and not the other way around.  With Galileo, they ushered in the age of science.  Go team!
  A pause for a beer at a restaurant that deserved more careful attention (but it was the wrong time of day), on through some charming medieval-ish streets:

past some more ornate buildings:

past a swarm of Segway-riding tourists (these are quite popular in Prague, the Segways, not the tourists riding them):

and I arrived at my chosen spot to while away the rest of the afternoon until it was time to catch the bus:

  This is a brewery west of Prague Castle, with a variety of beers, not just the stereotypical Czech pilsener:

  The percentages are not percent alcohol (thank goodness), but rather a measure of specific gravity (!).  What that means is that it is a measure not only of alcohol content, but also of the richness of a beer, because the substances that make a beer full-bodied and rich are heavier than water.  Or something like that.  It's called the Balling rating, due to a 19th century Czech scientist named Karl Josef Balling, and it is used widely in the Czech Republic.
  OK, so now I'm going to go into full-blown foodie mode, and reproduce their menu completely, because it's the most Czech place I got to.  Those not interested in food or beer can skip the rest of this post, because that's all I'm going to be talking about (as usual, click on the image for a readable version):

  I started off with their dark beer:

  That's a 0.25 liter glass; I appreciated that the price per liter was the same for small glasses and for large glasses (yes, I can't help calculating such things), and so I wasn't penalized for wanting to try them all.  This was my favorite of the three I had time to try; indeed, I brought four bottles of it back from Prague!  I had pickled sausages with it, a Czech specialty which would have been more enjoyable had I been with someone else to split the plate with me:

  Now they brought me a random bowl of soup mistakenly, which I consumed (thinking it was a standard "on the house" thing) but which was rather plain:

  That was the "broth with vegetables and noodles" on the menu, as it turns out.  Beer number two:

  And the soup that I had actually ordered, the "beer-onion soup with cheese toast":

  This was not a French onion soup; the cheese on the toast is actually a sort of blue cheese.  It worked remarkably well.  I'd say it was one of the best onion soups I've had, in fact.  Not too salty, the onions were wonderfully flavorful, and the blue cheese complemented their flavor very nicely.  Beer number three:

  With that I had a plate of sausages (yes, more sausages, possibly not the best choice):

  Two different kinds of mustard, which was nice; mustard is thin on the ground (so to speak) in Austria, so I had been missing it, which is why I got this.  Also a huge pile of horseradish, in which I made only a small dent.
  Here's a bit of their brewing apparatus:

  I'm not sure if they really make all those beers onsite, though, or if this was just decoration.  Anyhow, so I lied up above, I'm going to show a bit more post-foodie stuff before closing.  On the walk to the bus station:

  I liked this statue on the side of a building; the sculptor succeeded in making Luna look a bit loopy.  Note the crescent in her hair.  A few last sights of Prague:

  I got an amazing massage from a Thai woman at a ritzy hotel en route; she used her knees, climbing around on my back, more than she used her hands.  Helped me to recover a bit.  And then I crossed into ugly neighborhoods near the bus station, and that was it.  Viva Prague!  I have to say, it's one of the best quick city tours I've ever done, which is why I've blogged so extensively about it.  I want to remember it, and I fully intend to go back, with Keewi, some day.  So many yummy restaurants and amazing buildings, so little time!  :->