20,000 Steps

 Our stairway.

Our view from our window.

Here we are in foggy Prague having walked all day in the cold.  Claire started by buying a new hat in a stall by the Charles bridge.  Unfortunately, nowhere was open that sold SD to USB converters as its Sunday and the tourist places that are open only sell SD cards and tourist stuff like hats, Crystal and porcelain.  Our hotel is called Prague Central Plaza which is located in the city with a long walk to the New Town; even further to the Old Town and Charles Bridge and even further to the Jewish quarter.  We did them all and then crossed the Charles bridge to the other side.  Its about 7 years since we were last here for a long weekend and we could hardly remember anything.  I took some great photo’s but you wont see them until I can get a converter so Later I took a few crap pictures on my phone which are in this blog.  It was so cold that we both ended up buying a scarf each in the same stall by the bridge on our way back and I have yet to take mine off.  I am sure that we will be both still wearing them in bed when we wake up in the morning.

The restaurant we both fancied is on the other side somewhere near the Castle.  Its the one we found last time by chance that Tyco Brahe and Jonas Kepler had rooms in with a courtyard restaurant.  We had a lovely meal there last time but, although we tried hard we didn't find it.  We found loads of places that looked similar but no cigar.  The restaurant we ended up in for lunch was quite nice and the tourist 3 course menu was cheap.  The courtyard that looked most like it was called, “U Labuti” but they do all look quite similar.

Tycho Brahe had lost his nose in a sword dual and had a gold and silver one made that he wore most of the time.  He was an astronomer that kept impeccable records of planetary motion throughout his life.  In later life he took on Kepler as his apprentice and when he died at about 1600 Kepler took over his data and records.  Kepler used this mass of information to formulate planetary motion and came up with his famous three laws.  The first one said that planets take elliptical orbits around the sun which is at one of the ellipses loci.  The second one states that the planets sweep out equal areas in equal time intervals around the sun.  The third one is a formulae that shows how long an orbit takes around the sun using its average distance from it.  These laws are all mathematical formulae but I cant remember them off the top of my head.  As I am writing this in a bar quite near to our hotel you will have to look them up if you are interested.  For me, Kepler was the start of the scientific revolution that we are still in and is a very important part of our history that maybe is not recognized as much as it should be.  To be able to take huge amounts of data and convert this into mathematical formulae that is easily understood is an incredible trick.  The reason that I like science so much is that, once something is found out, we all have it forever and we can build on this to find new things.  The old noseless wonder that kept these incredible records could have lived for a thousand years and never have used it as Kepler did to benefit us all.  He was a stamp collector while Kepler was a true scientist that wanted to understand things.

The bar we are in is called “Legenda” and I guess that we will see rather more of it than we should do.  It is warm, far warmer than our hotel room without any visible form of heating or control and they sell cheap proper Czech beer.  They have “Staropramen 11%” and “Staropramen 12%” and a whole load of others to chose from.  I have chosen the “Staropramen nefiltrovany”, which costs 35Kc for 0.5l.  I had forgotten that the Czech Republic doesn't have the Euro and still has Crowns.  Luckily I got some out at the airport before we were picked up.

Although I couldn't find anywhere that sold converters, I did bring my camera charger that plugs into my USB port so I have managed to use the photo’s that I took with my camera.  We are back in our room now and Claire is in the shower; not sure if she has taken her scarf off yet.  Hopefully, I will get time to publish this before she gets back.  The title of this entry is the number of steps that we have done today.  The most I have done since I started using this pedometer that Claire bought me.

Not quite sure what we will do later tonight as we are both knackered from our journey last night and our long walk.  Maybe we will stay in or maybe we will be back at the Legenda again for an early meal and an early night.  I will let you know in the next entry.