Monday was our final morning in Prague before returning to Switzerland. We decided to tour the Strahov Monastery and surrounding grounds. Our hotel – Residence Monastery – was part of the original monastery. We toured the monastery, art gallery (no photos allowed), and library. The church was closed to the public.
Just a brief history of the Monastery. In 1140, Strahov Monastery was founded and the members of the Premonstratensian Order have been residing at since 1143 under the leadership of Abbot Gezo. The original monastery was constructed of wood but were replaced with stone buildings following a fire from a candle.
- Entrance to our hotel - Residence Monastery
- Part of our room towards the courtyard
- The ceiling in our room
- A photo of the Residence Monastery from the courtyard
- The entrance to what was the micro brewery that is now a very good restaraunt that we dined at twice - the first day and the last evening for dessert. Beth, Dave and Aaron say it was the best beer in Czech.
- A wider angle of the monastery grounds
- The courtyard outside our hotel room
- The entrance to the libraries
- Some of the books that lined the walls of the library.
- The smaller of the two grand libraries
- A book cover
- An example of a book - handwritten and drawn
- The grand library
- Tram 22- that was our main form of public transportation. Thankfully they run every 5 minutes because almost everytime we approached a stop to board, we would just watch it pull away. SO CLOSE!!
- At the train station getting tickets to get to the airport. See the panel of buttons. It is all written in Czech, so we had no idea how to get tickets. Thankfully, a really nice train station worker was able to help us.
- The wall of the train station. Reminded us of legos. Each stop was a different color.