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Czech Me Out! Prague

Well hello out there!! Just a quick entry whislt I can, atm i'm sitting in my hostel (free internet) having a lil rest before we head out tonight (halloween, and a canadian girls bday tonight, so it should be lots of fun!)

Me and Esther arrived here monday night at 10pm and made our way to the hostel, which included changing money, finding the bus we had to take, then realising we needed coins to buy the ticket. ... so back to the change bureau to get coinage. The bus trip was about 20 min long, then we transfered to a train station, got off the train and then miraculously (thanks to quick thinking in the paris-orly airport where we bought a prague travel guide) made it to our hostel.

After really only travelled in places where english is abundant, or that French is spoken, i must admit i've become slightly unaccustomed to being in a place were i cant even attempt to speak the language, let alone read it or understand it! A most uncomfortable feeling

Prague itself though is amazing. The city is huge kind of like a mixture of Paris and Dijon, it has the homely and beautiful feel to it whislt being huge adn having so much history behind it. The buildings here are out of this world, after hearing so much from friends about how Prague is still struggling to get used to its freedom after coming out of communist control i expected it to be a bleak city with little colour and monotonus buildings. But boy was I wrong. The amount of colour in the city is a little shocking initially. Bright yellow, pink, green and even the occasional blue buildings punctuate the setting, each building having its own freasces ... I don't know the right word for it... but all the mouldings and decorations on the building fronts... they are so beautiful and each building has its own specific little details, so much attention to detail its crazy!

Anyway, back onto what we have done so far, me and Esther arrived into our hostel at 11pm only to bump into two Turkish girls from school back in Dijon who were in Prague till today, and they've gone onto Vienna, where we're off to tomorrow, and we might even be in the same hostel there too, as we're both booked into the Wombat hostels in Vienna,... there's two... so could be another party night there! Once we'd settled in though, we chatted to some of the guys in our room, decided the night was still young and went out for a drink or two at a local bar. Over here cocktails are as common as any other drink, so it was mohitos all round! Anyway, one drink turned into five, and we stayed at the bar chatting and dancing to the terrribly old school american music until the bar shut! This was mostly attributed to the fact that one of the guys we where with decided he wanted to try Absinthe as its legal here, he had a great time and was absolutely hilarious to watch dancing! Me and Esther where too scared to try so put him off with 'another night' lines! Ha!

Tuesday we just did general sight seeing. We walked down to teh old town main square, whose name I still cannot pronounce! And watched the changing of the hours on the astronomical clock. The clock has been around since the 1600s i think and it shows a scene of all the disciples and jesus passing teh clock windows whilst a skeleton chimes the hours... it was interesting... then we lunched and went shopping! We're such typical girls. First things first, we had to buy a pashmina, over here(europe) they are all the rage and in Prague they are sooo cheap (and yes they are the real deal), next I got a Prague ashtray for my flatmates and a patch to sew on my backpack as over here they aren't selling tea-towels(and yes mum i've looked in every souviner shop to try and find one, not possible . Then we strolled down the streets looking in shops and made our way down to the Vltava river. So beautiful, then along to the Charles Bridge which is the oldest bridge in the city, its covered in statues and is walking only. It was full of artists, beggars and musicians.

Over here


The streets here are pumping and you can alwasy find an interesting street to sunddenly turn down, me adn esther havent really had a direct route for where we go... just a general direction and anything thing that draws our attention we follow, its been making for some really amazing finds and I ended the afternoon/started the evening buy attending an hour long classical performance in this amazing church that was selling tickets outside it. There are so many musical things going on in this city, its crazy, I even passed a huge stand with all the flyers advertising for musical concerts tonight not for the week or the next couple of days, but just tongiht, crazy! Esther's not really a big classical fan so she left me during that and we meet back at our hostel after it. We went out for dinner with one of the american guys from our dorm who was just down for the night, as he's been working just outside of Prague and was going back to America on saturday. It was really good because he'd been down to Prague a couple of times so he knew where some decent places were and also show'd us where the Aussie pub was.

I love how wherever you are in Europe, you can alway manage to find an Aussie pub... LOL

Tonight we are actually off to that pub (Fat Boys Pub).. lovely name... they're having a halloween party and costume competition...as we are sooo prepared we're going as 'backpackers' ... ah dear....

Wednesday has been a pretty productive day though, as we walked all of yesterday we decided to hop on one of the tour buses which drove us through the Jewish quarter and up to the different Palaces and past the Prague Castel, unfortunately we weren't on a hop on hop off bus so we decided that as it is such a treck up the hill.. the street is ridiculously steep... would take at least 45 min walk... up the whole way.. ahh!!! we decided we'd do that tomorrow... hopefully... once off the mini train bus tour we wandered the streets again in search of somewhere for lunch. I was insistant that we had to find somewhere truly Prague-esk and Esther found a little side alley way which had the most amazing ambiance and food!
We were absolutely frozen so when we where asked what we wanted to drink to start off with esther ordered a tea adn I ordered the soup! Then for mains I had a proper Goulash! It came in a hollowed out loaf of bread, with the lid and all!! Esther had a HUGE plate of meat and potatoes... they really pile on the veggies if you order them over here, a big change to France I must add.

After lunch me and Esther went exploring again, making our way through the streets towards the 'new' part of town, its much more open and not as novel to explore as there really isn't really many sidestreets for us to follow. We walked for ages and ended up at the National Museum, which we looked into going into and exploring, but really none of the exhibitions interested us, so we caught a metro back to the old town, and searched for the entereance to one of the hidden churches. Only to end up in a cafe for a cuppa. We happened to chose the most intreging cafe though, Esther had a 'London Fog' which consisted of earl grey tea, vanilla syrup and milk with a mint leaf on top, looked pretty cool adn tasted good.. a lil sweet for me, whilst I had a hot chocolate with cardamon adn cinnamon, soooo good, really warms you up!

Over here, it is FREEZING I thought i'd be fine, but yesh! Today i'm wearing three tops(one being a thermal too), jeans, scarf and my winter coat and gloves and I was feeling the chill. Slightly worried about when its going to get down to -5 in Dijon... im def going to have to buy thermal undies!! or tights!!!

Anyway, I have again gone into too much detail, so I'll post this today and when I return home (sunday) ill re-edit this and attach photos!

Lots of love to all,

Mills

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