Prague

After a lovely all night train ride, with a Japanese girl who snored loud enough to wake up our drunken neighbors, we arrived in Prague. For anyone considering going to Prague, and you should, do not take the taxis they will rip you off terribly (sorry Peter we did not receive your warning until after this first one).

Once we arrived to our first hotel, which happened to be owned by a friend of a Venetian that we met on the train, we informed that they were having a water problem and sending us to another hotel… right after this of course they showed an older Scandinavian couple to their rooms… hmm… oh well it didn’t matter cause our new hotel was great! While our old hotel was in the Nove Mesto (New City) our new one was in Stare Mesto (Old City) and was right next to the main Muzeum and the awesome street in front of it.

That first night we wandered that street a little bit and went to a restaurant that we recognized from Spain, Pizza Marzano… yes pathetic but most of the places to eat on this street were Italian and really the Czech ones that were there were filled with tourists, while the Italian ones were full of Czechs… weird… I guess one gets tired of goulash eventually. And for all of those out there who are in doubt, as Peter informed us, Czech beer is the best in the world, and the cheapest! You simply can not beat a half liter of sumptuous Czech brew for a paltry average of 40 czk (about 2 bucks… Yes it really is that awesome). It was also amusing to note that in nearly every tourist area there were clearly marked “look out for pickpockets” signs, also as Peter had noted for us.

Our first full day was marred by rain, but we caught most of the main stuff in the central area. We walked the street in front of Muzeum that I mentioned earlier, I believe its name is Wenceslas Square, but my map and my memory are apparently poorly annotated… either way the street is a beautiful place. In a way it is very similar to La Ramblas in Barcelona, in that has a wide pedestrian area in the center with a couple lanes of traffic flanking both sides, and then commercial interests in the buildings on the outside edges of the street. There are several differences but I won’t bore you too much with those now. This street basically had larger buildings around it that acted as shopping courtyards and malls, instead of being in Barcelona’s old quarter with its tiny streets and shops. Also this street does not allow cars to drive its full length, as it eventually acts as a gateway to the old city’s pedestrian zone when it terminates onto a wide shopping promenade.

After the street we went to the Old Town Square which is best known for its Astronomical Clock which draws tourists every hour on the hour, as it puts on a little show of characters parading past a set of windows in the clock. After this we grabbed lunch and headed to the Charles Bridge, which is one of the oldest stone bridges in the world. About this point it started raining pretty good and we decided that it might be better to head back to the hostel and blow off the Prague Castle until the next day. So the rain let up as we went back home, and so we decided to just wander around in the old town area. Eventually though it started pouring and we had to take cover over by the Powder Tower… not fun… anyway eventually we snaked our way through the shopping courts and malls and walked back up Wenceslas Square to our hotel. That night we hung out and ate (and drank of course) around Wenceslas Square again.

The next day we made our way to Charles Bridge again and started up the sizeable hill to Prague Castle. On the way up to the Castle we stopped at a cool restaurant called, Cowboys, while the food was nothing special, the space was really quite nice. The restaurant was in the cellar of a medieval building, and the brick arches and foundations were left exposed, creating a really nice to sit and eat and of course drink more beer… as a fun fact Czechs consume more beer per capita than anyone else in the entire world. You get a really nice vista of Prague from up at the Castle and the castle itself is fairly interesting. It basically is like a small fortified town, with a nice Gothic church and street called the Golden Lane because it housed the city’s goldsmiths at one time (as a sidenote Kafka also lived here for a time).

On our way down we caught a couple sights, like Prague’s Effiel Tower, and the Metronome. Also you can see the Tv Tower from miles away as it towers over the rest of the city. No we did not go see Frank Gehry’s building here, because I am not going to waste my time to go look at some building named after Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and is honestly extremely ugly. The rest of our time we just wandered about enjoying ourselves, I do wish we had spent more time in the Jewish Getto, but the rain did really cramp our time… oh well.

We had a great time in Prague, and I’d love to come back here again sometime. Peter does not seem to be the only one of his countrymen who has good taste in music, as Jeanne-Marie and I were reliving our childhoods with all of the 80’s music we kept hearing everywhere. Before I came here I did not know much about Czech history, pride, or hell Czech anything… well ok I knew about the beer but very little. Now I have really come to respect it and want to learn more about Eastern Europe in general, hopefully we eventually can make another trip just to see more of Eastern Europe nad the things it has to offer. Well now we are on our way up to Berlin, the train ride through the Czech Republic and Germany so far has been very enjoyable, with the hillsides being adorned with stone monestaries and keeps, and the towns nestled into mountain valleys and tucked up along rivers and streams. Very beautiful and very different from anywhere else I have ever been. Well as we are pulling into Dresdan I will let you go and stare out the window some more.

P.S. Thanks to Peter for his help and for writing out his “guide to Prague” for us! High Five!!!!