Prague

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I'M BACK! As previously mentioned, I spent this past week traveling around Prague and Berlin. Let's start off with Prague, since that's where we went first.

Stephanie and I got up super early to catch a 8:30am flight out of Charles de Gaulle on Smartwings and arrived in beautiful Prague after having to navigate their train system, getting screwed out of 30 CZH (we think), trying to determine the conversation rate that neither of us had thought to look up, figuring out how much CZH we might need for two days, then wandering around in circles trying to find the hostel. The hostel was a hostel. Not great at all, but it had internet access, free (gross) breakfast, cute reception boys, and a "bed." We shared a room with 2 sweedish boys and a sweedish girl, and then another random girl who was very awkward.

The first thing we did was find food! We had a good (but expensive) lunch in the Old Town Square. Stephanie and I discovered we have very similar tastes in food, so we ended up getting two dishes and sharing most times on our trip. One reason it was so expensive was that they don't believe in tap water, and their bottled water is in 25cl bottles and costs 4 euros each! We didn't realize that when people say beer is cheaper than water in Prague, it is actually true!!

After lunch, we just spend the rest of the day wandering around the beautiful city and seeing some of the famous buildings. It really is a tiny city, so we didn't even take the metro anywhere, we just walked. We even climbed to the top of the Powder Tower to see a view over the entire city which was interesting because the shapes of buildings in the eastern part of europe are very different from those in the west. All the buildings come to points, which gives the city a very different feel.

For dinner, we were determined to find a restaurant that Stephanie's friend had recommended. We walked accross a bridge, up a huge hill, climbed thousands of steps to the very tallest point in Prague, then proceeded to climb all the way back down again to finally find the restauraunt! Needless to say, we were starving by this point-- but once we arrived, we had to go out again to find an ATM because apparently Maly Budhha doesn't accept credit cards! We did have a wonderful meal though. The restaurant was very calm and played very relaxing Asian music and the owner of the restaurant decided to take Stephanie and I back into this little room where he decided to tell us all about Feng Shui. A little awkward. Then, he tried to get us to get in his car and go to his gallery, with him, at midnight. Like good little girls, we declined and left.

The next morning we went on a run through this huge park on the other side of the river, but up another 1000 steps (we were quite impressed with all the old people that made it up there as well... we were out of breath half way up!). After running and eating, we decided to go to the Mucha museum as Stephanie loves that type of art, then we went sightseeing again to see the St. Nicholas cathederal and also to go and see the old castle. I've included some pictures. I really liked the cathederal as it was in baroque style, which is different from all the gothic cathederals that I'm used to seeing all over Paris.

We then went back to Maly Buddha for one last drink and spring roll, then picked up some granola and yogurts for the train ride to Germany, then went to bed, rather early.

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