At the far end of Wenceslas Square is a terrific, musty old museum full of neat things—Narodni Muzeum, or the National Museum.

If you are a Chicagoan, think back to how the Field Museum used to be: stuffed animals, birds, rows of rocks and meteorites! Just what a museum is supposed to be like!

We learned a little about Czech history from the "Pantheon" hall of statures and busts of national heros and leaders. Then we oogled tons of interesting rock. Just before closing time, we hit the animal galleries.

We're still trying to find out what the little furry-scaley armadillo-like creature was!

Thankfully, Tom always had his reliable map, so we knew where we wanted to go to next, such as the Cubist House museum with the great stairway (and the Black Madonna).

The Museum of Decorative Arts sounds like a dreary place, but the guidebook said it was fascinating, so we checked it out. I, of course, was in hog-heaven because of the very lovely old pottery and glass. But Tom even enjoyed it, particularly their collection of pewter, silver, iron, brass, and other implements. We both wore our necks out going through drawers of historical Czech advertisments and posters that were just a lot of fun.

Then we stumbled upon their special exhibit of German Black Forest clocks. Tom liked the really old ones where you could see the clockworks moving, and we both were bemused by the ones with animated figures that polkaed, played horns, and tooted and whistled.

Then we wandered around until we found Obecni dum, the Municipal House, an Art Nouveau masterpiece of stained glass and lights.