Before this trip came to mind, I must admit, I had never really thought about Prague. I’d heard glowing responses from people who had been, but no specifics- so as far as an itinerary, I was starting from scratch.
Fortunately when traveling with a travel company like Viking, not having an itinerary of your own is really just fine. The minute we signed up for the 3 day extension, we had seats on the coach for a full morning city tour to get us acclimated. Then, several months before we took off, I got an email about a full afternoon excursion at the Lobkowicz Palace in the Prague Castle complete with lunch, a classical concert and a tour in the collections which include original manuscripts from the likes of Beethoven and Mozart- so obviously I signed us up for that and decided to call it a day.
But I can’t ever just call it a day. Hit the one month before departure mark and I was watching all the travel videos and reading all the blogs I could find about recommendations for can’t miss things to do in Prague- and thus I stumbled across the Strahov Monastery.
Some of my favorite spots in past travels have been monasteries and their cloisters- perhaps I will dedicate an entire post to that someday- so I started poking around for more information and discovered…they have a library! Oh, a library. Now, I will readily admit, I do not typically frequent public libraries (much to the chagrin of my good mother, the librarian) as I like to write in my books -but monastic libraries! Ah! Beautiful rooms covered in frescos, built for the express purpose of housing generations of tantalizing, leather-bound delights. The sight of the gleaming wood shelves! The smell of the leather and velum and parchment! Such joy. The monastic library was definitely going on the itinerary.
If you are simply passing through the monastery, you may walk through the library’s curiosity hall and peek into the two beautiful rooms of books from behind a velvet rope. However, if you pay a visit to the monastery’s website before hand and send an email to the lovely lady in charge of tours, you may arrange for yourself a private guide to take you INSIDE the Philosophical and Theological Halls. Well this I had to do- so I sent my email and waited a bit, and finally got a response- my mother and I could enjoy a private hour-long tour for just the two of us with an English speaking guide for $80. … $80! The one minor glitch was that I was booking rather last minute and the only time slot they could arrange for us coincided with Viking’s city tour. That dilemma caused only a moment’s pause, and I signed us up for the tour of the library.
We had the first slot in the morning and our guide was a wonderful woman named Evelyn who met us right at the library doors. We stood and chatted in the cool morning air while waiting for the doors to be unlocked, and once they were, we proceeded right up and in. The three of us were the only ones in the library. We sat on a little ledge right beside the books in the Theological Hall and Evelyn regaled us with some of Prague’s history (since we had missed the city tour), and a history of the library itself. And the books, and the globes (globes crafted in the 15th and 16th centuries are a fascinating study), and the marvelous useful furniture, and the paintings! It was a magical hour indeed. Now included in the price of our tour was the right to take photos, but of course, no flash- so I’ve included some of my pictures here, though they are a bit dark. (The cover photo of the Theological Hall is not my own). If you’d like to see the Philosophical hall in action, you can go watch Casino Royale and see Dame Judy Dench strut magnificently through the very space. Fabulous. I felt just like Belle in the Disney Beauty and the Beast when the Beast shows her his library for the first time. Little did I know that there was to be another library just as magical waiting for us down the Danube.
Needless to say, this was the highlight of Prague for me, and if such things interest you, I would definitely recommend the private library tour option for your monastery visit. The value for the meager admission fee is spectacular, though if you take advantage of this, please do come prepared to tip your guide well! These folks (at least in our case with Evelyn) deserve more recognition of their time and talent than the undoubtedly small cut of that small cost we paid for our tour. Tip. Your. Tour. Guides. 🙂
After our tour we decided to walk back to the hotel to meet the coach that was to take us to the Lobkowicz palace for the afternoon. We followed the signs towards the observation tower, got ourselves good and lost and finally, with the help of a kind fellow tourist and my rudimentary French, found our way to another joy- the Funicular! I now know that this little treasure is a more common occurrence than I had imagined, but I had never before encountered one and I enjoyed it immensely. A perfect, picturesque ride down Petrin Hill to the city center, and from there a lovely, breezy walk over one of Prague’s many bridges back to our hotel and the next portion of our journey. Since I’ve gone on so long here about the library, I will write one more Prague post for my other highlights, so check back soon! And then I may take a slight detour before we get on the ship and share some highlights of my recent short trips to Salem and Rhode Island!
*RECOMMENDED READING: The Beekeeper’s Apprentice: Laurie R. King
This is the first in the Mary Russell Series of mysteries, featuring Sherlock Holmes. This is another rather roundabout reference, but I do love Sherlock, and I recently discovered these books and am quite enjoying them. I justify putting this here because of Diogenes. When Evelyn showed us the Diogenes scene in the library, I knew the name, not for the man himself, but because Mycroft Holmes belongs to the Diogenes club. You learn something new every day!
I Digress 