You must be from Prague because I'm Czeching you out. (Sorry, I had to!)

Prague was one of those trips that you won’t forget anytime soon. Besides Radka and I, we had six other people with us. All friends and it was one of the best trips I’ve taken so far. It made everything easier that everyone else had been there before so they knew what to do, when to see things and how to get there. We took the metro for long distances and walked every place else. I was amazed at how much we got done in the first day really. We got to our hostel in the early afternoon and once we got settled in, we were on our way!

The first thing we did was make our way into the middle of the city to kind of show me the layout of everything. Our first place was Wenceslas Square with the Prague National Museum right behind us. It started raining, but not enough to stop us! After we walked around there a bit, and we tried some original Budweiser beer! Then we made our way into another part of Prague, I’m pretty sure this area was Old Town Square. To get there you walk through lots of small streets and I thought we were lost, but lo and behold we made it! We decided to go into a wax museum and museums of torture. Now I’ve never been into a wax museum before and after this, I’ll never go back. They were too creepy looking for my taste. After that we went to the Old Town Hall right outside the museums. You’ve probably heard of its little special feature. Every hour from 9am to 9pm, you see the 12 Apostles from 1402 go around as the bell gongs. There was also a kid with a trumpet that started playing, what I overheard, was the Czech National Anthem. From the Square we also saw the Church of Our Lady before Tyn, which was a beautiful church to see.

After walking around and grabbing lunch, we decided to make our way over to Charles Bridge on the River Vlatva. The bridge was amazing to see and walk across. All along the way on both sides, you have baroque statues depicting scenes from Prague’s history. One of them is about St. John Nepomuk, who was a priest who wouldn’t go against his teachings, thus defying King Wenceslas IV. You can read more about him here, http://www.prague.net/st-john-nepomuk. But the special thing about the statue is that if you rub the scene where he’s being thrown off the Bridge, you’ll one day return to Prague. There is another spot for St. John on the bridge, which is a cross marking where he went over the bridge. For that one, if you make a wish there; it’ll come true in a year and a day. Obviously I did both and I’d love to go back to Prague! Also along the bridge you have people selling homemade trinkets, photos, paintings and people performing. We went through the Lesser Town Towers and started our way uphill to the Prague Castle. Along the way we tried a traditional sweet called trdelnik, it took me a few tries to even come close to being able to pronounce that!, it was cinnamon-sugar baked dough in a spiral shape. It was delicious and made the horrible climb uphill better. I hate climbing uphill, but not enough to stop me from seeing the sights!  When we finally made it to the top, the view was more than worth the hike up there. Now since we got there late everything was closed up already, but we were still able to walk around the grounds which were huge. We were still able to see the Golden Gate, which had beautiful mosaic scenes of the Last Judgment and we also saw St. Vitus Cathedral, from the outside though. After that we walked around some other buildings and a couple other churches. We then made our way to Petřín hill for; you guessed it, more walking uphill! It was great once you got up there, you could do the Observation Tower or do what we did, go into a Mirror Maze! It wasn’t very good, but we had fun anyways. After making our way down in the funicular, we came across an art piece that was dedicated to all victims of Communism. All of that was our first day, we really did a lot.

Day Two:

This was our relaxing day, I guess you could say. We went to the Zoo and it was fun. Saw unpleasant things regarding the turtles took a sky chair ride to the top level of the zoo and ran away a lot from bees. I wasn’t too keen on the zoo because, well the San Diego Zoo was better. After that 5 of us went off wandering while the others went to the Hostel for a nap. We didn’t really need to see much, but we decided to just walk around wherever. We ended up trying Absinthe ice cream and it was horrible. Sweet tasting at first and then you get a really disgusting taste in your mouth afterwards, I tried giving it away. After walking around aimlessly, we found a restaurant to eat dinner in and ended up being serenaded by a bunch of Russians and an accordion player. Oh and my friends all decided to sing a Slovak song too. It seems that eastern European cultures all have traditional songs that everyone knows the words too. They told me they were drinking songs and after going out with them, I really believe it. 

Day Three: We were going home early in the afternoon, so all we had time was for a little souvenir shopping and getting food. Which was fine by me, I was exhausted.

I had an amazing time with Radka and all my new friends. I honestly can’t wait to see them all again and go on more trips! Now I’ll be posting my Paris trip after this one, so stay tuned!