Day 2 - Hotel Bristol Meridien

People who have stayed here: the Queen, Prince Charles, Charles de Gaulle, Enrico Caruso, JFK, Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, Evgeny Kissin, Marlene Dietrich, Michel Platini, Jackie Onassis, Jose Carreras, Murray Perahia, Edouard Deladier, Nigel Kennedy, Bob Dylan, the Shah of Persia, Prince Philip, Jeremy Irons, the Kelly Family, Marie Curie, Margaret Thatcher, Paderewski, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Artur Rubenstein, Roman Polanski, George Bush Sr., Gabriela Sabatini, Marshal Foch, Pablo Picasso, Paul Robeson, Edvard Grieg, Richard Strauss, Mary Pickford, Margot Fonteyn, Willy Brandt, Naomi Campbell, Yehudi Menuhin, Garry Kasparov, Al Gore, ZZ Top, Tina Turner, Bob Geldof, Duran Duran, Oliver Stone, Jacques Chirac, Paul Auster, Gerard Depardieu, Kiri Te Kanawa, Bill Gates, Lionel Ritchie, Mark Knopfler, John Malkovich, Bruce Springsteen, Paulo Coelho, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Isabella Rosselini, Placido Domingo, REM, Woody Allen, Yoko Ono ... though, oddly, none of them seem to be around at the moment.

Day 2 - Palaces and Radium

Morning spent - once I had dragged myself away from the pancakes - in the Royal Palace.  Best thing: statue of Chronos with clock / globe on his back. 

We then made it to a 25-minute organ concert in the cathedral of St. Jana, including Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.  Still feeling guilty about the pancakes, so had salady lunch in the Old Town Square - complimentary glasses of cherry vodka as digestifs.  Then on to the Marie Curie Museum.  What an incredible female role model and general superstar!  All those physics conferences in which she was the only woman.  When the First World War broke out, she organised mobile radiology stations at the front, thereby saving the limbs of thousands of soldiers - and she later wrote a book called La Radiologie et la guerre.

Day 2 - Pancakes and Gogol

Happy breakfast eating pancakes and reading Dead Souls.  Nice touch having Chopin playing in the lifts.