Backtracking to Prague

I've been reading Exit Into History: A Journey Through the New Eastern Europe, by the Polish American novelist Eva Hoffmann. Her description of entering Prague in 1991 is exactly what I wanted to say a couple of weeks ago:

We're passing rather nondescript peripheral neighborhoods; but soon we enter Prague proper, and I enter that state of primitive astonishment -- of helpless appreciation -- that is occasionally the traveler's reward.

Nothing I know about this other city of seven hills has prepared me for its extravagance and abundance and endless visual surprises, as if, somewhere beneath its ground, there were a constantly replenishing reservoir, or a geyser, from which beauty springs. The eye cannot move without encoutering a stunning piece of statuary, or painted decoration, or ornate architectural detail, or a Cubist thicket of chimneys. The parts meld into a whole that yeilds a sort of esthetic overcharge, an organic effect that is more than the sum of its compenents.

Prague

Lots of people told us Prague was a beautiful city. Jim and Sabine Casson and Kareena Dainty-Edwards told us it was their favorite city. But nothing can really prepare you for its magnificence when you drive from the airport, come through a tunnel and suddenly see the city and the Vltava River with its bridges laid out before you.