Old Town Prague

June 17th--Today was slow day for us overall. The apartment we are staying in is on the top floor of the apartment building. It is an "attic" style apartment so the ceiling slopes towards the outer walls. This means the windows are effectively in the ceilings. Since the sun starts to come up close to 4am (and there are no "blackout shades"), it makes it hard to sleep in. We taped a large beach towel over the window in the kids room, but Austin was still up a little after 6am. We knew immediately that he would need a nap today. We left the apartment and walked to the Old Town square. Immediately we were so impressed with the beautiful buildings in this square. We've seen a lot of squares, but this is probably the most beautiful one so far. The buildings in the square seem to cover every architectural style: Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Art Nouveau. We visited the Tourist Information office, walked through Tyn Church and then watched the astronomical clock on the Town Hall building strike noon. Since it was noon, that only meant one thing for us....lunch time. We wanted a quick, no nonsense meal so we settled on going to the Hard Rock Cafe in Male Namesti. This Hard Rock is very new having only opened in April. It is also the biggest Hard Rock we've encountered so far with 4 stories and a big crystal guitar hanging in the middle. It was our lucky day too at the Hard Rock because the kids meals were free. We don't know why, but we don't question when something is free these days. After lunch, we headed back to the apartment, but on our way we basically walked onto a film set on one of the small squares. We stood for a while watching the filming, but didn't recognize any of the actors/actresses. We arrived back at the apartment and put Austin down for a much needed nap. We finally woke him up a little after 4:00 and all went to a local bakery for a snack. We then walked back to Old Town Square to go up the Old Town Hall tower. The boys decided to walk up it while the girls took the easy way via an elevator. We got some excellent views of Prague from high above. We all walked back down the tower though. Then, we walked the shop lined street of Celetna. By the time we reached the end of the street, we realized it was already after 7:00 and needed to decide on dinner. On our way to the restaurant, we walked down the street where we had run into the filming earlier in the day, and they were still filming. This time we actually stood around longer watching several scenes being filmed. Mike finally asked someone what they were filming because we thought it would be so neat to watch the movie someday. Well, to our surprise, it was a commercial for Migros (grocery store). We laughed at how we'd been all into this and now we'll be lucky to ever see the commercial. It was cool to see nonetheless. We continued walking to our restaurant of choice for the evening, Pleznska Restauruce u Dvou Kocek ("By the Two Cats"). It was yet again another wonderful Czech meal. Mike ordered the Goulash a la Two Cats. I was seriously hoping that was just from the name of the restaurant and that there wasn't actually cat in it. :-) I wasn't that hungry so I just enjoyed a wonderful bowl of Old Czech potato soup. All very good and we again went back to the apartment with our bellies full. I think I'm beginning to see a pattern here in Prague.