OUR EUROPEAN HOLIDAY - DAY 27 - WARZBURG TO PRAGUE

Thank goodness for a sleep in this morning.  We didn't have to be ready to leave today until 9am.  It was nice getting to have a little extra sleep in.

We were gone by 9.10am and our first stop today was a couple of hours away at a town called Nuremberg. We spent a couple of hours checking out the Old Square.  The city was bombed pretty heavily during World War 2 and had to be pretty much rebuilt.  However, the old city walls remain.

 Unfortunately the beautiful fountain which is one of the centre pieces of this square had scaffolding all around it and it was being cleaned, so we missed seeing it.  Nuremberg is located on the Pegnitz River and the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal.

There are three main cathedrals in this square alone, and as we wandered around it we found the Saint Lawrence Cathedral was open, so we ventured inside and took a few photos.  The churches over here are magnificent.  We have nothing like these in Australia and definitely the age of some of these Basilicas and cathedrals

 St Lorenz Church is a medieval church of the former free imperial city of Nuremberg in Southern Germany.

The church was badly damaged during the second world war and was later restored.  It is one of the most prominent churches of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Bavaria.

After checking out this church, we wandered around the square taking some photos and checking out some of the other famous buildings.  Markets are held daily in this square and there was lots of fresh farm produce direct from their farms.  We bought a bag of delicious cherries for our lunch and some apples to have later.

Nuremberg is also famous for it's gingerbread -  we had to test it for ourselves....

We are finding that we really don't need much for lunch as we have been having wonderful cooked breakfasts and most nights finish with a three course meal.

We left here about 12.45pm and headed to Prague.  We had another half hour stop when we got to the Czech Republic border.  This gave us a chance to have a toilet stop, grab a hot drink and a chance to change some of our Euro's into Czech currency.

It was straight to our hotel after this stop.  The traffic was crazy coming into Prague and we had several delay.

We were staying at the Grand Majestic Plaza Hotel right in the heart of Prague.  The hotel was really lovely,  more old world charm, but quite grand again and definitely better than the hotel we had stayed at in Warzburg.

  From the time we arrived, we had 45 minutes until dinner was served in the restaurant.  Our meals are always lovely.  tonight we had a chicken noodle broth soup. Our main meal was delicious, we had duck served on a cranberry flavoured red cabbage, dumplings, stuffing, and gravy.  For desert we were served white chocolate mouse with Raspberry coulis.  Divine....

At 7.30pm we all met in the foyer to go on our river sunset cruise, under the Bridges of Prague.  We had a local guide George who was accompanying us to fill us in on the history of Prague.

 On the cruise we had live tradition Czech music by a man who played the piano accordion.  It has been a long time since I have heard someone play an accordion.  We were served a glass of wine.  Nothing nicer than cruising along the river, glass of wine in hand, listening to good music.....

We sailed down as far as the other side of the Charles Bridge and George filled us in on all the points of interest and more along the way.  The cruise lasted for a little over an hour.  When we arrived back we were picked up by  a mini bus that then took us from a tour through the old squares ( four in all) of Prague.

We visited the first square just before our cruise.  It was very different to Brussels Grand Place but still had a beauty of its own. 

We walked around the square whilst George explained each area of buildings to us.  The main Cathedral in this square is actually built behind some homes and you have to walk through a home to get to the church.  The houses were actually built before the Cathedral and the Government planned to take the houses down but that all changed when Czech was under communist rule.

 George told us that the Communist Government took all buildings and they all became State owned.  The country was poorly managed under communist rule and the Czech people were so pleased when the communist regime failed that they blew up the big statute of Stalin.  It took three attempts to blow him up.  The first attempt jut blew three buttons off his coat.  The second attempt took his head off and the third attempt destroyed him completely.  The communist  party also spent a small fortune building this big elaborate building to house a communist museum.  This never went ahead and now potatoes are stored in this building.  The most expensive and elaborate potato storage shed ever...

After our cruise, our drive back to the hotel took us through the three other main squares of this beautiful town before taking us up to the large monastery on the hill overlooking the city.  From this vantage point we had a marvelous view of Prague by night.  A really lovely end to a perfect evening...

Day 4 or the European part of our journey done and dusted...