For my last installment on photos from Prague, let's visit some more contemporary sites and revel in some more random shots to give you the flavor of this predominantly classic European architectural wonderland. You will find those who say Prague is overrated, overcrowded, architecturally unimaginative ... I agree only with the middle sentiment, but encourage anyone to visit regardless. To be sure, if medieval architecture bores you, you may not have quite as splendid a time as I did, but there's always an awful lot of mighty fine beer. :)

The John Lennon Wall (mostly referred to as the Lennon Wall) has existed for a few decades now, a symbol of peace in a city who has gained freedom from the Cold War era's communist iron fist less than 30 years ago. Originally painted with a portrait of its namesake, now people write and paint perpetually; if you made a time-laps photo over a year it would look like a kaleidoscope changing color and shape. When I visited it the second time when Erik and I concluded our Central European journey, it was virtually unrecognizable from when I first saw it only three and half weeks earlier. It had transformed almost completely.

And here are some other random wall drawings. Something fun around every corner in Prague.

Prague is a city suffering from a profusion of statues ... in every courtyard; on every building whether on the walls, the roofs or in a corner niche; lampposts and cornerstones aren't just lampposts and cornerstone but statues holding up a lantern or building. Remarkable. I love it -- there is simply never a dull moment walking around the city. 

Lots of good doors, too, and doorknockers and knobs ... from super ornate, to old and weathered, to a little bit whimsical. Here is a tiny selection ...

A now a wee taste of more modern Prague, with some interesting architecture in the first two photos below. After that are some shots from the Kampa Museum, a museum of modern art. Outside are several installations of mirror sculptures that really turn your view of the world upside down, sideways, and every direction in between. I of course am standing normally vertical to take the photos (too early in the day to have any kind of inebriation tilt ... ha ha) ... but it might take you a minute to figure them out!

Some other shots around town. Just everywhere you look, there is something picturesque. It's not really my intention to be a guidebook; I'm showing you the world as I see it. So I'll forgo an explanation of every shot. But just imagine yourself surrounded by interesting things wherever you go. Well, interesting in my estimation.

This is a poster with the icon for the Communist Museum. It was a very informative display and I'd recommend it to anyone. But I have to say, what I love most about it is the evil little nesting doll that represents it. I even bought a shirt with this picture on it.

A fun teensy weensy car and some friends and me at dinner.

And lo and behold, you have reached the end of Shara's 3-part romp through Prague! Hope you enjoyed the tour. 

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For my first 3-Hour Tour post, I’ll start with what I thought was one of the most fun routes we’ve discovered on account of all the mines and old buildings we ran across. Our most picturesque voyage in that area.

Let me explain briefly that the area around Nederland, Colorado, and especially between it and Central City, is criss-crossed every which way with old mining roads and old forest service roads. The area around Central City was once known as the “richest square-mile on earth” for the wealth of minerals in the ground, particularly gold and silver. I couldn’t even guess at the number of old abandoned mining cabins, mines and ore processing buildings that dot the forested landscape. Of course, by now, every year there are fewer as their age has finally reached a critical point where many are collapsing. So I value each one I run across, not knowing how much longer it will stand.

So on this particular adventure, it was our goal to locate a 4x4 route from Mammoth Gulch Road to Gamble Gulch Road. We had pretty amazing luck ending up where we wanted to, considering the maze of roads that exist in this area … truly dizzying and hard to know in the thick forest if you’re driving in circles or not. We usually go out late in the day when the sun is beyond helping us, and our 1988 4-Runner ain’t got no fancy compass thingy in it. In fact, it ain’t got no fancy anything. Which is partly what makes it a great vehicle for exploring … a few more dents and scratches aren’t even going to be noticed.

Putzing around online after we got home, I found a description of this route saying to be sure to bring your GPS for this very confusing route … Bah!! GPS-users are wimps. We even managed to find -- mapless and GPS-less -- the “shaft house” listed as an attraction of sorts on the website, and we didn’t even know it existed.

The description on the website also says parts of the route are "not for wide or shiny new SUVs." Ha … Trudy is perfect, as stated above! Trudy is the name I have given to our trusty 4-Runner. The site also states it’s a half day trip … but as you know, we did it in 3 hours. Pretty much any drive time stated in any source for any driving condition on any road with any vehicle can be practically halved with Erik at the wheel. Fortunately we get along well in this respect as I’m typically game for the faster pace. A lot of 4x4 route drivers go slowly in order to minimize the bumpiness of the ride for passengers, but I personally like a bumpy ride, it’s more like being on an amusement park ride or something.

At one point the road dead-ended, and fortunately we got out of the truck to have a look around, for we found this charming abandoned mining cabin. The mine entrance is right next to it, now collapsed and filled in as most mine entrances have been for safety reasons ... though I miss the old days when I first moved to the area and a lot of old mines had not been capped and you could walk into them. The mining cart tracks now just disappear into the weeds.

After this picturesque dead-end, we managed to turn around in very tight quarters and followed a different path which led us to what we'd been looking for ... Gamble Gulch Road ... a "regular" maintained dirt road. There was a gate at the end of the 4x4 path which fortunately somebody else had torn down, clearly for the purpose of allowing vehicles on the 4x4 route to pass through. Had the gate been standing, it would have been excruciatingly difficult and perhaps impossible to turn Trudy around on the narrow forested trail to find another route. Once on the Gamble Gulch Road, we ran across across more mines, shacks, processing buildings and artifacts from the mining days ...

The water leaves trippy colorful patterns on black plastic around this mine, which is pretty, but knowing normal water should not make those colors and should not be brown, takes a little from the beauty ... there are many contaminated mining areas.

A nice lookout, in a rare break from the narrow confines of the forest, to the backside of the Front Range mountains.

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I’m always a sucker for European castles and cathedrals. Prague Castle and St. Vitus cathedral didn’t disappoint. The heart of “old town” or “classic” Prague lies between the castle/cathedral complex and the Old Town Square, with the Charles Bridge spanning the river between the two of them. The castle, I suppose naturally, holds the high ground, overlooking the rest of Prague and the Old Town in the distance. Here is a little photo tour through the cathedral, the castle and its grounds, which are lovely to walk through and provide excellent overviews, plus a quirky little attraction rather at odds with the uber-classic nature of the rest of old town Prague’s architecture. Then we'll take a brief jaunt across the bridge.

From my temporary residence near Pohorelec, I could walk downhill to the castle, entering it through the main gate, and passing by this lovely lantern which I always wished I could have seen lit at night. At noon each day, a column of castle guards marched into work (I presume). Hi-ho hi-ho. There was a wonderful gypsy band that often played for tips in the large open courtyard in front of the castle, I spent probably a total of a couple hours listening to them and watching the crowds filter in and out of the castle, wondering what sorts of folks wandered in and out of the grounds in its heyday ... what the guards once looked like with lances and swords and horses to ride, what scenes of stench and horror surrounded the castle during times of plague and pestilence, what ragged bands of Renaissance musicians sounded like twittering their flutes and drums. 

The inside of the castle was actually surprisingly spare ... not full of opulent furniture and wall/ceiling moldings. It seemed to exist in a very functional state ... an administrative center rather than a lavish palace. It was here that I rediscovered my love for the word "defenestration," when we learned of the history of this seemingly preferred method of deposition of unwanted court officials (that is to say, throwing them out a high window).

 My favorite part of the castle was actually walking the grounds and gardens along the side, where you can look over the city ... over the minions, if you will ... over the serfs and subjects of this architectural grandeur. Well OK, only in the imaginative past, those serfs. Nonetheless, very pleasant. First photo, notice the friendly guard hanging out amongst the greenery.

At one point, as you descend toward level ground near the river, you find yourself looking down into this rather odd space with dripping, organic-like shapes that look as if formed out of limestone or cement. In fact, it's a man-made wall whose features are called dripstone. It covers a large area of the Wallenstein Palace Gardens, and makes for kind of a jarring but not unpleasant juxtaposition of modern artistic architecture with very classic gardens and an outdoor stage where I found an orchestra practicing one day. There were several families of peacocks in the gardens which I watched with fascination as they claimed territory and persecuted one another, the mother peahens coddling the strong chicks and abandoning the weak ones.

 And now for a study in feeling small and insignificant in the face of human accomplishment ... stand before St. Vitus Cathedral! You can see from the first photo, only a portion of the exterior can be captured in Erik's camera lens. I've stood before some tall cathedrals before, but this one seemed particularly immense, looming above me. Can't decide whether it's ethereal or sinister, reaching Heavenward to the wide sky or glaring down upon the punificent. Daunting, in either case .....

The inside of the cathedral ....

Check out the set of organ pipes!

 Walking down through the cathedral and castle grounds, down long stairways and narrow streets, eventually you come to the Charles Bridge, the most famous bridge in Prague. After crossing the river, you can then continue on to the Old Town Square where the town hall with its astronomical clock presides. The bridge was undergoing renovation while I was there, so it was closed down to "one lane" shall we say ... which is to say at only half its normal width, it could get exceedingly crowded, almost claustrophobic during the day and evening.

 The outside wall of the tower at the end of the bridge is very ornate and full of statues and coats of arms. All along the bridge are stone statues depicting sometimes kind of random scenes. Street performers line the bridge with their acts, and artisans with their crafts, but with the half-width bridge during renovation, this got to be a little too much. I'd like to return when it's fully re-opened. Just one more reason (excuse?) to come back to this lovely city.

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Recently I visited a friend near Santa Barbara, California, and one day we took a day trip into Los Angeles to see the Huntington Botanical Gardens. In particular, my friend wanted to show me the Desert Garden exhibit. She thought it was pretty special and the highlight of the gardens. I concur with her assessment ... I've never seen such profusion of cacti. The garden has existed for over 100 years, so some of the cacti have grown to monstrous proportions. One cactus of this age is reported to weigh in at 20 tons! And some yucca-type plants have a height of 60 feet.

I had no idea the variety of cacti and succulents that existed. The desert garden display features more than 5,000 species of succulents and desert plants!! And is spread over about 10 acres. It was truly astounding -- dizzying, almost overwhelming, in fact, with the often stark geometry of cacti overlapping one another, and so many varieties packed in so close together. It was so densely grown with such variety, it was like a rainforest or jungle, but of desert plants. A unique place, indeed.

So here is a photographic glimpse of the desert garden for you to contemplate the wonders of nature with. The first photo I originally featured in the Friday Photo section before I put together this post. It gives you a very rough and, frankly, pretty inadequate idea of the varieties of desert plants co-existing in the display. One of my friends made the remark of this display area: watch out for banana peels! You can just see Wylie Coyote go skating into one of these prickly scenes, right?

There were a fair number of fading cactus blooms and the pods of ones completely finished. But I managed to find some flowers still dazzling in full spread and color.

The golden barrel cactus seemed especially photogenic to me. From the Gardens' website, they say: "The ribs of the golden barrel cactus resemble an accordion, expanding and contracting as the plant stores and uses water. Many of the golden barrels you see here were planted from seed before 1915 and now weigh several hundred pounds."

And lastly, some of the fauna in the garden ... a sweet little pigeon, and me and my friend, Vida, who so kindly introduced me to this magical desert garden that has forever changed the way I think of and appreciate desert plants.