A rainy day? Well, visit a coffee house of course, or several coffee houses. And then as some of you mentioned, museums and exhibitions.........
But let me start somewhere near the beginning. I am cheating you a little, because I had coffee in Hotel Evropa already the first day, which was not a rainy day. When the rainy day came I had coffee....somewhere else. But to cover it all I would have to blog a new post every hour, and then I wouldn't have time to see as much of Pragueas I have.......hard choice! well, not exactly, exploring Prague live has priority to blogposting of course.
Hotel Europa was built in the art noveau style in 1903-06, and even now, more than 100 years later, it is keeping it's style. An elegant outdoor facade, inside it looks almost exactly as it did a decade ago.
I sat down with a caffe latte and a book....... ands my moleskin travel diary.
It must have been on my second day in Prague, in another coffee house, that I picked up the meny but never made it past the front page. The illustration stirred something in me, the seducing woman looked like a cousin of Sandro Boticelli's Prima Vera, but had her own charm...... what was this.....
Later in the day I saw a signature which caught my interest. It looked so much like Munch, Edward Munch....
All of a sudden I saw these seducing women, this almost familiar signature, everywhere, and then it didn't take me long to seek out more information. It all led to one name, one man - Alphons Mucha. An artist totally new to me, not at all new to the world.
Look close at the words written on the yellow house.....
Yes, an Alphons Mucha exhibition.
A perfect refuge for the rain.
I love it when the sun shines down on me like this on a rainy day. A NEW ARTIST. A new world to explore. Yes, of course I bought a 2010 calendar, and yes, of course I bought a book about Mucha, his life and his work.
But.......I can't keep on travelling like this. Then there will be no time to explore more deeply all the things I discover.....
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Back in Hotel Evropa I am so busy with my looking around. When I leave I also leave one of my books, Jan Neruda's Prague Tales from the Little Quarter.
When I come to search for it the next day, it is gone. Hopefully another booklover is enjoying it. I've already bought a replacement.
