Praha part IV - So much to see

Can one ever get enough of Prague? In my case, the question is a loud, capitalized "NO". 
And since it's most beautiful to me early in the morning (i.e. without the masses of tourists), I let my sister sleep while I went for a hike through the old city center. Compared to the daily craziness, the entire center is a wonderfully quiet place at 6 am, making it wonderful to walk the empty streets and squares. 

Only a couple of road cleaning teams were tidying the traces of the night as a swan family had their very own feather cleaning competition right by the otherwise busy riverside next to the Charles bridge. 

One day, I'll wake up early enough to have the Prague castle all for myself. Until then, however, a quiet view of Prague's most-well known sight will do. And what a lovely view it is!

Off to the Charles bridge, which was already occupied by several wedding photographers, but still very enjoyable considering the usual amount of people during the daytime.

Past the church of St. Nicholas I slowly turned back towards home to get some breakfast and head off again, this time with my sister in tow. Walking a quiet and empty Wenceslas square we headed to an equally tranquil Old town square to start our sightseeing for the day. 

First stop: the Choco story just off the main square, where we planned to benefit from the "all you can eat" chocolate offer, and maybe learn something about the treasure that is made from cocoa beans. Our first way led us straight into a practical demonstration of creating chocolate pralines, which included a detailed display of the process as well as a little sample tasting. Interesting and yummy, what more can one wish for?

Later on, the exhibition itself turned into an introduction of the cocoa bean, its history, current production and use. The exhibits that are on display are described in a number of languages and include factsheets...

... ancient recipes...

... samples of containers from which the sweet beverage was served...

... as well as chocolate boxes from all over the world. And once the myth of chocolate making you fat was debunked...

... one could finally discover the answer of why Slovenia never turned out to be a "Second Switzerland". The difference between 2 considerable chocolate factories and a 22-sided list of 2 Swiss manufacturers per page speaks for itself.

And where could the "all you can eat" buffet be? 

The self-service chocolate containers certainly looked like the gate to a chocoholic's heaven at first glance, however, I couldn't possibly eat the amount of chocolate chips I had in mind. Is the chocoholic getting out of shape or was it just a subconscious safety precaution to prevent possible choco-poisoning?

Anyway, after purchasing a little something in the adjacent choco shop, we proceeded to explore the city some more. With a toilet-emergency coming up and the mission of finding a free-of-charge toilet in the city center, the Honest-Guide-watching me did the math, figuring out our closest shot would be the nearby University building. Turns out the lady  at the reception didn't quite know what to do with us (or is the University not accessible during the summer holidays?), however, she nicely directed us to the "other building" in the end. Looking back, I think she simply thought we were looking for the exhibition on the history of Charles University. But where there's an exhibition there's usually a toilet as well and voila - after an unexpected dose of education we were good again for a while.

Next on the menu: the exhibition of Asian art in the Kinský Palace which I've seen already, but as my sister is into everything Japanese, I had another go at it, too.

After a lunch break, it was time to discover some more. As the Old Town Hall tower was closed due to renovations, the official replacement tower was located a couple of meters away at the New Town Hall (Novoměstská radnice) by the Charles square. 
On the way towards the way, we happened to bump into the World Photo Awards exhibition and a couple more interesting city sights...

At the tower itself, coughing and puffing was rewarded with a view of the Prague skyline...

... as well as a weird eye-to-eye encounter with a very special surveillance camera.

More of Prague's sights, among which I especially love the numerous passages around the city center. Not only is each of them uniquely beautiful, they'll always lead you towards a new street, square or courtyard. 

And since the day wasn't over just yet, we thought we'd have another view of the city from the Petřín tower (Petřínská rozhledna) which we haven't climbed the other day. 

After quite some waiting time, we finally boarded the funicular to get to the hilltop, only to see another long queue waiting to enter the tower. Not in waiting mood, we decided to just stroll through the rose gardens, and later descended home towards Anděl.

~ to be continued ~