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Published: January 3rd 2009
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Breakfast at the hotel at 8am and then it was back onto the metro to get to the Sudbahnhof. With it being rush hour on a Monday morning, the metro was insanely hot and crowded but thankfully it was a fairly quick trip and I didn't make the mistake of missing our stop completely like I had the day before 😉 When we arrived at the station, we found that our train (which had been due at 10:04am) was fifteen minutes delayed, so we settled down with our books ready for a bit of a wait. Keeping an eye on the board, we saw that another train headed for Prague was due to arrive on our platform at 9:30, but was delayed by 35 minutes...which had us a little confused, as that meant two trains would be arriving at once! John of course got himself into a panic, and had me constantly running over to check the board and see if anything had been changed lol, but there were about 100 tourists standing around who were about as clueless as us so there was very little point to that. Eventually, at 10am, a train showed up on the platform and we
just assumed this was the first train so we weren't going to bother heading over...until it got to about 10:15, and the train was still standing there. We went to have a look, and everything pointed to it being the earlier train (which we didn't fancy getting on, because we didn't have seats reserved on there, and it was due to arrive in Prague later than our train anyway)-until, very luckily, John noticed that the last carriage had a Hamburg sign stuck on the door. Knowing that was the final destination of our train, John checked with the conductor and it turned out that
was our carriage...so we jumped on, about two minutes before the train pulled out of the station! I don't know if they just combined the two trains or what, but at least we figured it out in time! 😊
Anyway, we found our seats, which were in a compartment for the first time. At first I was quite excited because it was very Hogwarts Express and actually quite comfortable, but that lessened the longer we were there and the more crowded it got. For the last hour and a half, all six seats were taken
up and it started to get quite cramped, but at least it didn't last too long. I was also cheered by the sight of the beautiful Brno as we passed through-I was dying to get off and have a look around, but unfortunately we couldn't really afford to lose half a day in Prague 😞 Anyway, after the original delay, the train continued to lose time and we ended up arriving at the Holesovice in Prague 40 minutes late...which was especially frustrating for me because John finished his one book about half an hour in and didn't cope with the boredom too well! I did offer to give him one of my Nazi books to read, but he didn't seem all that interested in that for some reason....
We immediately got an interesting introduction to Prague before even leaving the station...on passing between the platform and main station, we passed a couple lying on some stairs who seemed to be rather enjoying getting to know eachother (and I mean getting to know eachother
intimately). Shocking, but quite funny lol. We went up to the station and got some change for the metro (paying 19 Korunas for a Mars Bar
was quite odd) before trying to figure out the ticket machines and hoping we'd gotten it right. The metro journey itself was very easy and we had our moment of truth at the other end when we had to pass through a stern-looking line of ticket inspectors...who waved us through! Turns out I can add "understanding Czech ticket machines" to my list of many talents 😉 We had a quick walk to the hotel, Archibald City, and got ourselves checked in-the woman at the front desk was a bit snooty, but the hotel itself was really nice and it was very good to see a big double bed after our singles in Vienna 😊
We headed back out very quickly, as it was already 4pm and we didn't want to waste anymore of the day. John was very amused to find that we were again staying in an area surrounded by sex shops-I think he was starting to get a bit suspicious of me by this point, but it's not exactly my fault that nice, reasonably-priced hotels always seem to crop up in these areas! Our hotel was only a five minute walk to the middle of Wenceslas Square,
so that was our first stop, mainly so I could see the Memorial to Victims of Communism. I had spent a lot of time studying Prague's role within the Soviet Union so it was important to me to be able to see the monument and explain to John who the people were on there (and he was very interested in it, before anyone accuses me of boring the poor lad to death!). We then walked down Wenceslas Square to Na Prikope where we had a quick look in the shopping centres before passing through the fabulous Powder Gate into Prague's Old Town. We spent an hour or so walking through the streets there, taking in the beautiful buildings and being amazed by the stacks of tourists everywhere...there was about five times the amount of people than we'd seen in any other city on the trip, although with the Old Town being quite a concentrated area, it felt like even more than that. It was completely insane! Every other shop was marketed towards tourists and stag/hen dos, and it was really quite strange seeing all that in the midst of such a pretty place. The day before, I had been remarking
that Bratislava just needed a commercial area (like Na Prikope) to make it as big a tourist attraction as Prague, but after seeing what tourism had done to Prague, I kind of hope it just stays as it is. Saying that, we did really, really like Prague immediately-I think I would have just liked it more had it been a bit more authentic.
We reached Old Town Square, where there was a big jazz festival going on and lots of drunk hippes lying around lol...I don't know if that's a common thing in the city or if it was just an effect of the festival, but it was quite a strange sight. We walked around the square and then stopped off at an Italian restaurant near the Astronomical Clock for tea to have a huge pizza. Our waiter really irritated John by making a point of saying loudly 'Tip NOT included' when he brought our bill, and so he got a total of about 2 pence from us (when we're usually very generous with tips...so he screwed himself there a bit lol), but the meal was good at least 😊 After that we continued to just have an easy
walk around, with me getting very frustrated at John refusing to buy me some Ron and Hermione puppets from one of the shops we passed, before stopping off at the Vltava. We were planning on going to the Charles Bridge the next day, so we went to one of the adjacent bridges this time to take some pictures of the castle and the city and relax for a while before deciding it was time to head back to the hotel for the night ready for a busy time the next day.
(Just in time too...it started to rain when we were two minutes from the hotel. What is it with Central European cities and rain in the evenings?!)
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