De TOP-bezienswaardigheden van Praag - Oude stad, Joodse wijk, Karelsbrug (rondleiding op basis van fooien)

Great tour by Daniel this morning, despite the rain. It was a large group but he kept us all together, and made sure we could hear what he was saying. Good walking pace with plenty of stops and just the right level of information provided each time.

Nous avons passé 2h45 supers avec Andrew qui nous a pris en mains et n'a pas cessé de nous expliquer sur un parcours qui reprend les zones phares de la ville, l'histoire de cette ville et de ses habitants. Tout en restant drôle et dynamique, bravo !

I don’t expect my Prague guides to have encyclopedic knowledge of every aspect of Prague’s history, past or present. But I do think it’s reasonable to expect the guide for a tour titled, “Old Town, Jewish Quarter and Charles Bridge tour,” to know something about the Jewish Quarter. I also expect him to at least mention the Holocaust, especially after having just devoted considerable time at the Jan Hus statue to touting Czechoslovakia’s record on both religious freedom and atheism. Instead, on Tuesday April 4th I had Ondra/"Andrew," a self-professed ancient history major whose primary question to our group once we’d reached the Jewish Quarter was to ask if we could guess what kinds of prices apartments there are fetching these days(!) When I responded that the more important question, to my mind, was why there was no public memorial to the 88,000+ Jewish residents of Prague murdered in the Holocaust, he shut me down and spoke instead about the statue of Kafka in front of the synagogue, urging us to rub the statue’s body for good luck, and making a smarmy remark about ladies and rubbing. That was when I quietly departed the tour and canceled the two other 100 Spires/Walkative! tours I’d booked for the next two days. I was particularly disappointed having enjoyed super smart, personable Walkative! guides in Barcelona (Filipa) and Berlin (Will). Also because the tour was so clearly full of smart, interested people who could easily have gelled more as a group if given the chance. I think it’s worth mentioning that Ondra/Andrew asked his how-much-do-you-think-people-pay-to-live-in-the-Jewish-Quarter question after he had taken us to the back of the Spanish Synagogue to state, incorrectly, that “This isn’t what you’d expect a synagogue to look like” and refer to Jewish religious services as “mass”(!). Five minutes of online research might have informed him that “Moorish” architecture is precisely in keeping with the design for a Spanish, or Sephardic structure and finds its echoes in the design of nearby Berlin’s internationally known mid- nineteenth century “Neue Synagoge.” I’m done with 100 Spires/Walkative! in this town. By the way, if you'd like to see the stunning Jewish star in the attached photo, you can either go to a concert in the Spanish Synagogue or book a tour there through the Jewish Museum. But it is not part of the 100 Spires/Walkative! tour.