We woke up bright and early the second morning, determined to catch more of the city.
We crossed Charles Bridge again, careful to stay in a group this time, admiring sepia photographs of the surrounding cityscape. But once we got the the other side, distractions abounded.

Mike, Manuel and I went into a toy shop, filled with flying bicycles and other wonderfully useless knick-knacks. Then two Japanese girls came in, twittering sweetly in that oh-so-Japanese way in, erm, Japanese. Colourful as Czech princesses, and twice as pretty. When they left, I followed suit, dumping the two guys who were still playing with a wooden, rectangular Slinky.

Outside, I lost the girls to a crowd of Bohemian Crystal worshippers. Ah feck. Oh well, walk on, brother. I came upon this really kooky puppet shop with ceramic cats and warty witches on really short broomsticks. Entering, I hit gold. The two Japanese tourists from before, and four more of their sweet schoolgirl friends.

Eye candy heaven.

I tried chatting them up, but my Japanese was hopeless and their English was perfunctory at best. Still language barriers never had to get in the way of visual leisure. They said goodbye in their shy, happy ways and I smiled tata back. Perhaps a grin more goofy than deadly sexy, but you deal with what you get, yeah?

Suddenly realising, I had not seen the rest of the pack for awhile, I scurried away in a hurry. By chance, I found Mike and Manuel in a café. After the chill of a morning’s walk, a hot chocolate sounded just about right. Got SMSes from the rest, but couldn’t answer due to dead batteries. Oh well, they could take care of themselves. We sat and drank our hot chocolates. Slowly.

When we finished, we continued up the hill to the Prague Castle. Incredible view from up there. You could see the whole city. Poetic, thanks to an unlikely lack of modern architecture. We walked into the Old Royal Palace, baroque in contrast with the gothic towers of the St. Vitus Cathedral further inside. I especially liked the stained glass windows, modern by design but fully utilising the shattering of light into colour.

On the way out, we passed by the Golden Lane, where small pastel houses mushroomed, and St. Georges Basilica, a Romanesque church where we found our last couple of Japanese girls for the day. Manuel suggested I ask them for a photo, and I did.

I managed to persuade them to pose for a pic with Mike and I that Manuel took. After struggling back and forth with English and Japanese, I sank to using Mandarin, Cantonese, German, Malay, and even offering Italian by way of Manuel. No luck. Oh well, nice speaking ta ya!

…to be continued.

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Copyright © 2002 Kenny Mah Ying Fye.