Having walked twenty one and three quarter miles in the past three days in 32C of heat we decided to spend the last two days at a more leisurely pace. Dan was brilliant at locating what he wanted to see and navigating his way there so I just trotted along happily beside him. He had two main things on the list for the Sunday: one was to go to the crypt of the Orthodox Christian Church St Cyril and Methodius Cathedral; the other was to go to The John Lennon Wall followed by lunch at the John Lennon Pub, just around the corner.
After breakfast we caught the tram again, but stayed on it longer. We eventually got off at a stop by the river and headed for the church, which was up a bit of a hill on a corner. People were coming down the stairs having clearly attended a service.
St Cyril and Methodius Cathedral
There was an unpretentious looking door and entering through that we were both amazed to find ourselves in a museum with a great deal of information about Operation Anthropoid, which was the code name for the attempt to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich the Obergruppenfuhrer of the region during the German occupation. A number of films have been made about the operation, which was ultimately successful, but at a huge cost to those involved. The men were trained at one point at Cholmondley Castle near Chester.
There was a lot of information about the planning and execution of the operation. You go through another door modelled on a Spitfire wing. Here you can see the small trapdoor where the men came and went and the window where the Fire Brigade poured water in an attempt to flush them out after their whereabouts was revealed by a traitor. They all perished by their own hands either just shooting themselves or taking Cyanide pills and shooting. Statues to all the men line the sides of the crypt and the large stone that hid the entrance to the stairs inside the church was disguised by a huge concrete slab. I found it all very moving.
We had a quick look inside the church, but as there were still people after the service I didn’t want to intrude. We looked at the window used by the Fire Brigade then retraced our steps to the tram stop where we took a tram to just beyond Charles Bridge, the John Lennon Wall being on the other bank, which was once the Old Town.
The John Lennon wall was a way of the young doing a soft protest against the Russian occupation. They started the wall in 1980 after the assassination of John Lennon and would go there to sing Beetles’ songs and songs of freedom. These days buskers go and sing similar songs. We took a few more pictures then headed to The John Lennon Pub for lunch.
We had lunch in the beer garden at the back. It was a nice cosy atmosphere and the food was good. Star of the day was Dan’s waffle, especially his look of delight when it arrived.
I had seen a nice restaurant for the evening meal close to where we were so I booked there for our last night. By now it had started raining, although it was still very warm.
We decided to visit the permanent exhibition of Mucha and Warhol, which was on the Town Hall square and it was a way of escaping the rain. Having crossed Charles Bridge still thronging with people we made our way through the crowd to the Town Square. The crowds had thinned out here and we were soon in the exhibition of Mucha. I found the style fascinating, particularly his posters of Sarah Bernhardt that I knew more through her association with Berlioz.
Moving on to the Warhol exhibition I learned that his parents had come from Slovakia and he had changed his name from Warhola. The information on him was in more depth than Mucha and part of the exhibition was personal letters to his brother. I particularly liked his painting of his mother with whom he was very close.
There were a number of different colours of his painting of Marilyn Munro
We returned to our hotel to change for the evening and returned for a meal at the lovely restaurant on the canal by the water wheel. We were given a table on the little balcony opposite the water wheel that I had photographed earlier. There were a lot of flowers and it was charming. It was quiet being a Sunday night, but the food was very good.
After dinner we made our way back to the big square where Dan fancied an nightcap looking at the square by night, which was really lovely and a good end to the day and especially our last night.
