Letna Gardens and Prague Castle

  So, I visited Prague back in the summer, and had a wonderful time there, which is why I decided that Keewi and I ought to go there.  I wanted to see some spots I hadn't seen in the summer, though, so we started off walking to the north side of the city, to Letna Gardens.  We were rewarded with nice views over the river and a pretty little pavilion:

  The pavilion, called Hanavsky Pavilion, was built in 1891 for the Czech Jubilee Exposition.  The informational plaque says that in it, "iron is utilised to its fullest technical potential.  So there you go; if you've ever wondered what the pinnacle of ironwork looks like, now you know.

  Onward to Prague Castle.  I visited this over the summer, so you can look back at those photos if you want, but this time I paid admission to go into the buildings, so I got to see lots of stuff I hadn't seen before.  I was particularly impressed by some of the stained glass windows:

  I particularly like that last one.  "Osvobozo" apparently means "liberation," not sure what the remaining letters mean.  We climbed up many steps to the top of a tall tower in the castle, for some city views:

  That last one is actually from the lower end of the palace complex, not from the tower.  Then we looked at some other buildings in the palace:

  The first two are of some random building in the palace, I don't remember what.  The rest are from the Basilica of St. George, including the rather bizarrely mismatched exterior of the basilica.  It was founded at the beginning of the 10th century; Prague has History with a capital H!

  Next stop in the castle, Vladislav Hall:

  This historic hall held coronation celebrations beginning in 1509 and ending in 1836 (the actual coronations taking place in the nearby cathedral).  The second photo shows the window where the Second Prague Defenestration took place, defenestration being the act of throwing something (in this case people) out of a window.  The First Prague Defenestration took place in 1419 and triggered the Hussite War; the second, in 1618, set off the Thirty Years War.  The term "defenestration" was actually coined because of the Second Prague Defenestration.  And I have stood at the spot where it happened.  You may touch the hem of my garment.
  Also in those photos, some golden holy relic thing that they were all worked up about, a side chapel, what seemed to be a throne room but I'm not sure, the crown jewels (or replicas thereof; the gems looked suspiciously plastic-y), and the amazing ceilings.

  Finally, some silly tourist shots (Keewi's camera; all the rest were mine):

  These were in an old abbey/convent/something, also within the castle grounds.

Prague!

  On January 3rd Keewi and I took the train up to Prague for a honeymoon-within-the-honeymoon.  We arrived in the evening at our hotel right in Old Town Square:

  It was surprisingly quiet despite the location, and close to everything.  It wasn't cheap, but then it's actually hard to find cheap accommodations in Prague unless you go down to hostel-type places.  Hotel Cerna Liska, which means "black fox".  I think it is one of a large number of boutiquey hotels that have opened in Prague in just the law couple of years.  Painted wooden ceilings which were simultaneously gimmicky (I'm pretty sure that, far from being medieval, they had been painted, oh, last year) and nice.

  We went for an evening walk around the city, and I got some very nice photos of dusk on the river:

  Then we found a neighborhood pub and had some real Czech beer sitting elbow-to-elbow with real Czechs (Keewi's camera now):

  The coaster is the name of the bar, U Zlateho Tygra.  Wow, everybody's got a website these days.  Shared tables; we sat with maybe some students, and with an old fellow who simply everybody seemed to know; every few moments someone would stop at our table to say hi to him.  He spoke no English, and we of course speak no Czech, but we had a very friendly time of it with smiles and nods and gestures, and he took the photo of us together.

  Welcome to Prague!

More Vienna-bopping

  Bop till you drop.  Another couple of days in Vienna with Keewi, starting out with some art deco buildings downtown near Naschtmarkt (all Keewi's photos this post):

  I think this is the day we went to the Hofburg, but I seem to have only a photo of a post horn as a record of that:

  And then we went to the Mecca of desserts in Vienna, Demel:

  Let's take a little tour of their dessert selection, shall we?  These photos are essentially non-overlapping, they have a huge selection:

  We got four things to go, and they were all fabulous.  Worth a pilgrimage, and I'm not even a dessert person, normally.

  And then another dinner with friends, just before leaving for Prague:

  This was at a little neighborhood restaurant, Gasthaus Kopp, with really good traditional Austrian food, a surprising amount of which was not breaded and deep-fried.

  A funny thing about Austria: they are apparently required to have separate smoking and non-smoking areas in restaurants, but they are either unclear on the concept, or in protest of the concept, I'm not sure which.  This place was relatively good, with the smoking area separated by a swinging door that was only sometimes propped open for the convenience of the wait staff.  I've been to other places where the two are technically different rooms, but with only a double-wide, doorless archway separating them, and of course the two rooms end up almost equally smoky.  Sigh.  People smoke a huge amount here.  Sometimes I'll step into an empty elevator, and the residual smoke in it will cause me to about-face and take the stairs instead; sometimes I'll have to change cars on the subway to get away from someone particularly reeking.  California, I miss you.

Laxenburg

  So we went down to Laxenburg on New Year's Day, so Keewi could see the schloss where I work:

  It was quite deserted, naturally.  I gave her a tour of those parts of the schloss that my key will get me into (see my summer photos for that tour), and then we went for a walk through the park behind the schloss:

  I've taken a few photos of that park before, but I was in for a surprise (switching to my camera now):

  The lake was frozen over, and there were ice skaters, people with dogs and strollers, people playing ice hockey, etc., all over the place.  A lot of people, too, but this photo doesn't really show it because I'm zoomed in on the castle behind.  Some more shots as we wandered around the lake to the castle and back:

  Sometimes I forget how beautiful of a place I'm getting to work, and then a day like this comes along to remind me!

Fireworks!

  New Year's Eve in Vienna!  We went to a restaurant on a hill overlooking Vienna, Kahlenberg, and had dinner at a restaurant at the top of it, also called Kahlenberg:

  It was basically a fancy buffet dinner.  The view out over the city was quite nice, with fireworks going off in all corners, but that proved impossible to photograph.  There were also people setting off all sorts of fireworks from the balcony just outside the restaurant:

  It was quite fun, but I was fairly sick, and so we called it quits before midnight and went back to the apartment for me to collapse.  On the way back, a serendipitous moment:

  We always joke about how Keewi looks like an Eskimo (I guess the correct term nowadays is "Inuit"?) when she wears that coat.  When we got back to the apartment, it turned out that we had ringside seats for the mayhem that is Vienna on New Year's Eve:

  That's the only photo that came out at all, but we could see (from our fourth-floor window) fireworks being set off simply everywhere, including by two different, and apparently competing, groups of partiers on the street directly below.  The fireworks people set off in the streets here are not the familiar bottle rockets, sparklers, etc. that Americans would have; they are top-quality, the kind of fireworks that you see in the U.S. in the big fireworks shows that cities do.  Ordinary people have those here.  Fireworks are apparently entirely legal here, and frankly it's amazing the city doesn't burn to the ground. Bangs and whizzes and wails, and ambulances and fire trucks roaring around the city with sirens blaring, until about 2 AM, when it finally died down.  Wow!  Honestly, I didn't know Austrians had it in them, they seem so reserved ordinarily!

Hundertwasser

  Friedensreich Hundertwasser was a Viennese artist and architect.  He's quite famous here, and he designed several buildings in Vienna.  One day Keewi and I decided to do a little Hunderwasser tour.  It was started by seeing the power plant he designed at Spittelau, near where I am living in Vienna:

  Not the most beautiful building in the world, but for a power plant, it ain't bad.  I showed Keewi that because we happened to be going by it anyhow, en route to somewhere else, but she liked it a lot, and so we went to see his other local buildings.  First is the Hundertwasser Museum, KunstHausWien:

  It has a cafe and bathrooms that are all Hunderwasser-ified as well.  And you can kind of see one of his signature elements: organically uneven floors ("an uneven floor is a divine melody to the feet").  Quite playful and fun.  Then on to Hundertwasserhaus, an apartment building:

  That was a bit depressing.  In contrast to the museum, the HundertwasserHaus was badly in needing of fresh paint and maintenance, and appeared to be run for maximal gouging of tourists (courtesy of the gift shop across the street, also designed by Hundertwasser), with no respect for the actual value of the building.  As I understand it, it was constructed as affordable public housing, and Hundertwasser designed it for free to, as he said, prevent something ugly from being built instead.  Sadly, I'm not sure he succeeded, despite his noble efforts.

  But that isn't his fault, and I still like his architecture.  Often compared to Gaudi, for obvious reasons, but quite different and unique.  I'd enjoy going to see some of his other buildings, most of which are in Austria and Germany, but there are exceptions, such as a winery in Napa that I don't think I ever visited!

  I also saw some paintings by Hundertwasser at a small museum that I went to several weeks later, but you won't get to see photos of those.  They were immediately obvious as works by him, even though I had only seen his buildings before then, never his paintings, which is kind of interesting.  The aesthetics transcend the medium, I guess.