The last Weekly Photo Challenge in 2012 is, not surprisingly, the reminiscence of the whole year. I chose for you the views of Prague (mostly), places that I visited, actions that happened there.
In January I visited Vyšehrad, place with beautiful atmosphere any time a day, on the shot you see rotunda of St. Martin from 11th century, one of the oldest churches in Prague. More about Vyšehrad and its famouse cemetery you can read here.
Vyšehrad
February is a month for carnival and Mardi Grass celebration. This shot was taken in Karlín, where the celebrations took place at the main square around the church. More about Karlín you can find here.
Smíchov
Spring was coming and at the small garden by the Faust house in Prague (you don’t know who is Faust? Read more at wiki) yearly selling exhibition of alpine plants took place in March.
Faust house and alpine plants
You already read something about Prague subway in one of my previous posts, in April I visited it from the background and the experience was quite interesting. See trains in engine house on the next shot.
Metro
“It’s first of May the day of love”, that’s the beginning of poem May by Karel Hynek Mácha, a Czech romantic writer. His statue stands in the big public park Petřín and every first of May couples are coming to kiss under blossoming tree here and greet Mácha. The English translation of the whole poem you can read at this link. Warning: it doesn’t have a happy end!
Petřín, the funicular at the background
At my blog you can read mostly about Prague city center, but there are big housing estates with block of flats around the city. Even there you can find parks and oases of nature, such as a farm called Toulcův dvůr with cows, horses, sheeps, and other domestic animals. I visited that place in June and on the shot you see the view from there.
Toulcův dvůr
Almost whole July I spent out of Prague, so this shot is from place called Czech Switzerland. It is at North Bohemia and the nature here is just stunning. You can hike there and admire the nature in its wildness. We were lucky, as the gulches on Kamenice river were opened after two years, when they were destroyed by big floods.
Quiet gulch
August I spent travelling around country too. Kutná Hora, the second most important city in Czech Republic in our history. On the shot you see the St. Barbara cathedral and I wrote more about this place here.
St. Barbora cathedral in Kutná Hora
Back to Prague, the famous John Lennon’s wall has been changing day to day, how it looked in September you can find on my shot.
Lennon or Lemon?
Fall in Prague is really beautiful as you can check also here, my shot for October shows you St. Vitus cathedral, the most important church in our country, from a bit different perspective that we are used to look at.
St. Vitus cathedral
Houses of Prague are full of house signs. People use to ask me why there is written “U” (U dvou slunců, U housliček, U prstenu, U kamenného zvonu, …) on the buildings. You can also find the “U” on my shot, where “U tří Turků” is written. The “U” means “beside” or “by”. Thus, the house is called House Beside three Turks, because of the three Turks heads on the facade. I plan to write more about house signs in Prague somewhere in future. Meanwhile, you can look at more house signs at my very first post here (bottom picture). That’s my shot for November.
Turks
About December in Prague I wrote a lot, you can check all the posts and I also wrote about the tradition of nativity scenes. The last picture is from the famous church of Our Lady Victorious, where you can find the statue of Baby Infant Jesus (also on my list for next year posts). At the back of the church you can find shelves with figures of baby infant Jesus all over the worls but also small nativity scenes, like is the one on my shot. The creches are from South America (Salvador), and I love that simple style a lot.
Betlem
I hope you enjoyed my 2012 tour and I hope we will meet next year, if not in Prague, then definitelly on my blog pages here :-).
PragueByKaty 