Rainy Days and Wednesdays . . .

OK, I've had it. And if I'm losing patience, imagine how fun Mr. Crankypants is to be around :)

Today is at least day four in a row of rain. It might be more. I have to check what day it is about every 15 minutes. We still went out, this time to the Archdiocese Museum of Olomouc which is on the grounds of St. Wenceslas Cathedral. Since both my colleague Antonin and my translator Jana recommended we check it out, we decided to go.

So, we set out from our dreary apartment. Here is a picture from our windows of the lovely sun-less day. We took the tram up the street, always an adventure for an Indiana girl. We went one stop too far, of course, so we got off and got right back on another tram and went back to the right stop. We'll figure it out eventually. As we walked up to St. Wenceslas Cathedral, there was organ music playing, so we went inside and sat for a while. It was still raining. It was quite lovely and I think I read that St. Wenceslas catherdral has the largest pipe organ in Europe. Even if I'm making it up, it's a good story for now.

So, the archdiocese museum--today was free day. We didn't know that, so we saved a whole 50Kc each, which is $2.50 to you and me, kids. So we tried to splurge on the English audio thingys for a whole 20 Kc, but of course the woman couldn't get the English to work, only German. That would have been just as well. So, we walked in and the layout leaves something to be desired. Here's how it worked:

First, there's a giant heavy black closed metal door. We're Americans; we don't just walk through doors that look like they lead to a prison cell. But that was the entrance. We were told to go through and there was a woman in there who asked for our tickets--on free day. So we gave her our tickets and proceeded to walk back through 3 or 4 rooms of 700+ year old documents, books, jewels, carvings, statues, etc. Ok, something that was made in 1380 and you can touch it? That is pretty amazing. But we don't really know what we're looking at. So, we get to the end of the last room, and there's no where else to go. So, we backtrack, back to the first room, the door lady, the giant door. You see what's going on here? Not a great sense of flow.

Second part, this is sort of an excavated part that has ramps and stairs down, so you can see the original walls of the cathedral; the original building was consecrated in 1141. Anyway, more mysterious doors with elderly ladies pointing, smiling, and giving us their blessing to go ahead, so we did. At one point, we went the wrong way and they told us to go a different direction. After that, they sort of followed us around to make sure we saw everything. Literally, they kept an eye on us, opened doors for us, pointed us up or down stairs, around corners, until we reached the end of this section. And guess what? We had to backtrack again.

Final part, the paintings, dating from 1400+. Of course lots of dark colors. Here we had to wear slippers. Not sure why we had to wear slippers to look at room upon room of painting, but we did. And here they almost had the traffic flow thing figured out, but we still had to backtrack a bit to find the slipper lady and return our slippers. But why wasn't she wearing slippers. In fact, no one was, but us . . . joke's on us.

Thank goodness for this museum. I don't know how many elderly ladies are employed as door docents, but every door had a lady positioned, just waiting for some silly non-Czech speakers who didn't know the rules or how to navigate their way through a perfectly wonderful museum. And yes, we saw it all. They wouldn't let us leave until we went through every room. By that time, we were ready for a pivo. And it was still raining.

And then it was time for an espresso and chocolate.

And it was still raining.