Day 7: The Fountain

Saturday, May 19, 2012 

As so often happens on Saturdays, I made plans for today and carried out exactly none of them. I intended to get up at eight and visit the library. I ended up getting up at two and staying at the hotel. Pretty normal. I think I need at least one day a week where I don't go anywhere. 

More hotel key shenanigans! It turns out that if one of us takes the key out of the room and closes the door, the rest of us are locked in until someone comes to let us out. Fortunately, there's a telephone in the room, so we could call the front desk. I'm really starting to question the logic of this one-room-one-key system. Hopefully, we'll run out of mistakes to make with it soon. 

I found out today that all the fields of yellow-flowered plants I saw on the way into Prague are not mustard or buttercups (that many buttercups would be a really bad sign), but canola. Interesting. 

As we have no food in the hotel room, it was necessary to go out for that, at least. I walked downhill from the hotel for a little while, since I've only been uphill to the tram stop before now. Lots of little streets and shops. I got lunch supplies (bread, meat, etc.) at a little potraviny (minimarket) at the bottom of the hill, then walked back up. 

I stopped by what might be my new favorite fountain. It's a collection of four strange bronze creatures in and around a round stone basin. 

All four of them are spitting differently shaped jets of water into the fountain, the reclining one from fairly far away. I made sure to take some pictures; we move to a different hotel tomorrow, which will be about fifteen minutes' walk farther away from this spot, and I don't know if I'll be back again. I'll certainly try. 

I looked it up on Google later; as far as I can tell, it's called the Fontana v Americka, probably because the traffic circle it's in is at the crossing of Americka and Zahrebska. The sculptor is Miroslav beščec (pronounced BESH-chets).