St. Vitus Cathedral and Terezin Concentration Camp

Sorry for being a day late on this post (does anyone even read this thing?).  Anyway, yesterday was a long day that started off early.  Our goal was to arrive at the St. Vitus Cathedral (which we photographed from afar the day before) at the time that it opened (9 AM) in order to avoid some of the crowds and tour groups.  However, there were more exciting sites along the way to the cathedral than we had anticipated, and we ended up arriving around the same time as a bunch of other tour groups!  At least we have some memorable snapshots from along the way!  We walked past a beautiful opera hall...

...and caught our first glimpse of the lovely (and relatively uncrowded) Charles Bridge!

This bridge is over 7 centuries old, build in 1357!!  Until the 19th century, this was the only bridge across the Charles River (today there are several).  The bridge is lined with statues of important people from Prague's history and most notably John of Nepomuk (a saint of the Czech people).  Legend has it that rubbing the plaque at the base of the statue of John of Nepomuk grants you one (and only one) wish for the rest of your life. 

Oh yeah...and before we crossed the bridge we had a random run-in with none other than the Boston Bruins hockey team!  They are in Prague for an NHL exhibition match this coming weekend, and were out touring the sites...

After crossing the bridge, we continued on our way to the St. Vitus Cathedral.  The walk was lovely and marked our first visit to Prague's "Castle Quarter."  Unfortunately, since we had arrived later than expected at the cathedral, we didn't have much time to spend there, other than to take some (possibly illegal) pictures...

Next we headed back towards Old Town to hop on a bus to visit Terezin.  Terezin was originally built in the 1780s as a military fortress, and had varied uses as a prison until the Nazis arrived in 1941.  At that time they brought in 60,000 Jews to form Terezin concentration camp.  Terezin was supposed to symbolize the Nazis' "perfect Jewish town," although all of the so-called perfection was staged.  They used this camp as propaganda to "impress" Red Cross Inspectors in order to keep them in the dark about the camp's real function.  Visiting the camp was a sad and moving experience, but it was something we both felt we needed to do as a part of this trip.  Being in a concentration camp doesn't really inspire a lot of photos, but we did take a few of the more memorable sites.

After we were thoroughly depressed, we made our way back to Prague for a late dinner.  It was super chilly in Terezin, and we had to wait almost 40 minutes for the bus back!  Brrr....

Dinner turned out to be later than usual, so we didn't feel up to blogging yesterday.  At least today you get two posts, right?!  Stay tuned...
Love,
Matt and Kim