Petrin Hill

After arriving in Prague following our train adventure, we decided to climb Petrin Hill for the spectacular views of the city.  The hike up was incredibly sweaty(and having the bag with all of our stuff in it on my shoulder probably didn't help with that), but had some nice stops that we enjoyed on the way up.  Here are a couple:

After we got off the tram, we walked up this street towards the hill.

(The cobblestone street was hurting Sarah's feet, so she decided to walk on the cobblestone sidewalk.)

The Hunger Wall, built in the 14th century to help the poor during a famine.

(How does building a wall help fight hunger?  It takes your mind off being hungry if you're focused on building such a big wall.)

We then came to the Royal Gardens.

Hard to completely capture in a picture, but they were beautiful.

In the Royal Gardens, we found a hippie's dream - a tree you can sit in and then sign your name on.

(For those of you wondering, no, we didn't actually sign the tree.)

Sarah's pose was just in case someone may have thought she was going to sign the tree after sitting in it.

We then arrived at the replica of the Eiffel Tower at the top of Petrin Hill.

Here we are at the top.

(Not near as sweaty or out of breath as the last Brockbank couple to climb this tower.)

The view from the top of the tower, after combining a few pictures together.

The basement of the tower contains my favorite museum in Prague, and for that matter, probably my favorite museum anywhere.  It is a museum dedicated to Jára Cimrman, the greatest Czech of all time.  Why haven't you ever heard of him?  Probably because he isn't real.  He was made up in 1966 as a character for a radio program, and has since been attributed with many accomplishments, none of which were actually his, but the one of my favorites was that it was after his suggestion that the U.S. government built the Panama Canal.

I think my favorite part about this museum is that it's basically sarcasm embodied in this man.  The museum is essentially a bunch of old stuff - pictures, baby clothes, a broken tennis racket, etc. - that would be pretty much worthless, but instead they put funny captions next to them and somehow relate them back to Jára Cimrman.  For example, there was an old black and white photograph in which no one was smiling.  The caption said something to the effect of "Jára Cimrman told everyone in this picture that if there was exactly 100 people in the picture, and one dog, then nobody had to smile."  I should have taken a picture next to that old photograph so all of you could try to count and see if there was exactly 100 people and one dog, but since I didn't, we'll have to settle for the pictures I did take:

Sarah with Jára Cimrman's bust that he made of himself.

What better thing to do that take a bust of someone destroyed beyond recognition in a fire and attribute it to good old Jára?

Me with Jára Cimrman's tennis racket.

Too bad we never played each other.  It would have been quite the battle of wits.