Vysehrad

Today we walked about 8 miles or 16300 steps per Gayle and her pedometer. If Prague is a pie, we metro'd the pie in half and walked around one side of half the pie. Our trek started at the crumbling ruins of the old castle of Vysehrad. Construction of the Church of St Peter and St Paul started in the 11th century and ended with the neo-Gothic structure in the late 1895. The Czech make planning a project an art form.

What a perfect place for a picnic or a hot cup of coffee and some fresh baked treats. We enjoyed the latter in a sunken park surrounded by 4 statues, in pairs facing each other 100 yards distant like a football player frozen to stone when their contract got canceled. We were told later that the statues were cut up in slices during WWII when a lost allied plane accidentally dropped a few bombs on Prague. They were too big to haul away, so they sliced them up and moved the chunks to the old castle grounds.

Speaking of stones, we looked valiantly for the “Vysehrad Columns” legend has it that they were thrown by the devil after he lost a bet with a priest. The story goes, “the priest said he can say Mass quicker than the devil can bring a column from Rome to Vysehrad. Then he prayed to St. Peter and he helped him to win the bet”. There is power in those prayers!

Another tale about Vysehrad is that Princess Libuse had an outside bath with a view of the Valtva river. When she tired of her lovers, she had them thrown down a hole in the rocks beside her love nest. This sent her former paramours falling hundreds of feet into the river. It is also said that squire Libuse was sentenced to death, probably for not bathing with the Princess, and asked if he could ride his prize horse Semik one more time. He jumped on his mount and raced for the gates. After finding them closed, he raced towards the cliff and Semik flew over the cliff carrying him down to the river saving his life. There is no account whether or not his mount Semik survived. If not, Semik should have bathed with the Princess since the hole is not that big and it's difficult pushing a big horse down a small hole.

After our snack we wandered over to the old cemetery whose remains include, Mucha (artist), Smetana (composer), and Dvorak (composer). The cemetery rather than feeling lifeless and gloomy was beautiful and full of life. One statue in particular that caught my fancy had three hands coming out of the rock, turning a circular hatch. I can hear someone saying, “Hey let me out of here”. The gravestones did remind me that we lost a good friend and neighbor, Johan Samlowsky. He was always full of life and had a huge giving heart. Our prayers are with his wife Bridgette. It must be hard to lose someone so special!