Travels continue: Prague!

Our Roman adventure over, my friend Katherine and I headed off towards Prague, Czech Republic. Our immediate introduction to Prague, like introductions to many cities, was not particularly charming. The airport, like most airports, was pretty far away from the center and I really hate figuring out how to get from airport to Hostel. Our journey from the airport began with trying to find the right bus. Not particularly easy to do, considering that Czech, like Danish, is really a horrible looking language. We were however told, by a transit worker, that we should pay our fare on the bus. However, when we attempted to pay the driver, we were yelled at in Czech. Not sure why, but then he motioned for us to move. Other people appeared to have tickets, but we never purchased a ticket of any time. So within our first hour in Prague, we definitely broke Czech law, by stealing our five dollar bus ride. However, we never got caught and when we changed to a subway train, we managed to figure out how to pay for that ride. Finally, that train ride over, and after a twenty minute or so walk so with our bags, we found our first hostel, Chili Hostel, where we stayed in an eight bed room, with six complete strangers, which ultimately turned out to be a great way to meet some pretty awesome and interesting people.

Our hostel basemement.

After getting settled in our room for a little bit, we headed out to eat. Our hostel was like a twenty minute walk from the really touristy areas of Prague, so we were fortunate to be able to find some pretty cheap eats. For $10, I had a gigantic meal, which included goulash, a delicious beef dish, some spinach that I actually liked, potato dumplings, and a soda. We were pretty beat from a long day of travel after dinner, so we planned on going back to the hostel pretty quickly. However, the restaurant we chose to eat at was right on the river, so we decided to follow the river a little and see what we found. And we definitely ended up walking much further than we intended. As we turned a corner, we got our first glimpse of Prague that was as breathtaking as I had heard. From our spot across the river, we could see the big castle in Prague, the cathedral and bridges, and lights. It was amazing. We decided to walk towards the lights and just kept getting drawn in further and further to the city. We'd see something we wanted to go look at and say, let's go there and then turn back. But from there, we'd see something twice as amazing and had to keep going. We ended up going to the famous Charles Bridge, which is covered in old Gothic statues and enjoying the amazing night views. This is also when we noticed that Prague is extremely touristy! I hadn't heard so many Americans since being in America!

The entrance to the Charles Bridge

Our first beautiful view of Prague

The next day, Katherine and I set off to explore the city in the morning. In our explorations, we ended up finding an old looking wall just off the main touristy area, and the wall kept going all the way up this really long and steep hill. So naturally, we decided to climb the hill. From the hill, it was very apparent that it was autumn. The trees were red and yellow and amazing. And the top of the hill provided an amazing view of Prague's old town. We also explored a pretty sweet island in the middle of the river that we were able to get to off one of the bridges. This is also where we first noticed the abundance of dogs in Prague, none of which were on leashes. Somehow everyone just has perfect little dogs that don't leave their owners! On the hill, we also found an interesting monument, the "monument to the victims of communism." We figured out that the Czech Republic really does not like communism any more, after their Soviet occupation.

View from the hill

Autumn on the island

Monument to the victims of communism

Also, this was the day that we first discovered an amazing thing when traveling through European cities: free walking tours. Basically, you go on a tour, with a guide that is paid only on tips. We saw some really parts of Prague, like the Astronomical clock tower, some old churches, the Jewish Quarter and more. One of the coolest churches we saw had an old shriveled up human arm hanging in it. The legend says the arm came from someone who tried to steal a statue of the Virgin Mary from the church. He pointed out the oldest Jewish cemetery in Europe, which has over 25,000 bodies in it, in a VERY small areas. The bodies are buried one on top of another an the gravestones are piled in every which way. Our tour also came complete with re-enactments from the guide that actually made Czech history very interesting.

Astronomical clock tower

Cool church sculptures

Hebrew clock from the Jewish Quarter.

We also discovered a grocery store today, where we bought some delicious pastries and wafers, which are strangely popular in Prague. The wafers are like two giant communion wafers with hazelnut flavored sugar in between. Really good.

Wafer

Other highlights from our remaining time in Prague include:

The castle and the Cathedral: We hiked up a very long hill to the castle, which was cool to walk around. And at the end of the hill was an amazing cathedral. This cathedral is the second biggest cathedral in the world. And considering we saw the first biggest (St. Peter's) only a couple days before, I was pretty happy to see this one as well! The cathedral was huge and gothic, with amazing gigantic gargoyles, stained glass windows and more.

Castle and the Cathedral on the hill

We found the John Lennon wall, which is a giant wall covered in John Lennon related graffiti, including lyrics, his face and more. It was pretty neat to see. Near the wall was an old-fashioned watermill and a fence covered in locks. We never figured out what the locks were really about but it was still very cool to see and very different, and it was a nice find a little off the super touristy path.

From the John Lennon Wall

Watermill and Locks

Food in Prague was really good and beef heavy, with good sauces and stuff. Really creamy and delicious. What was unusual however, was the fact that almost every meal came with a side of some random raw vegetable. At one meal, I had a side of sliced cucumbers. At another there was a side of lettuce. And at yet another there were quartered tomatoes. Strange, but at least it made me eat my vegetables.

We also visited the Kampa Art Museum, which was an art museum we found right by the river. There was a lot of really neat stuff in there. Basically, Prague loves weird sculptures. I'll just show photos, since a picture's worth a thousand words:

Giant-faceless babies.

Penguins

Me + ?

We visited a giant TV tower. In and of itself, the TV tower would not have been that impressive, considering the fact that we had to walk pretty far to see it. What was really strange about it was the giant sculptures of faceless babies climbing up and down it on all sides. It was really really creepy, actually. And I'm not sure what the babies were all about, but there they were.

TV Tower. If you look close you can see the babies on the left-most column