Our short stint in Eastern Europe...Prague <3

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Prague. Our first and only country we’re visiting in Eastern Europe. Western Europe was filled with more countries we wanted to go to but Czech Republic was recommended by many people, was cheap and the home of absinth. We got here in the early afternoon and the first thing I noticed was that the station seemed freakishly quiet except for these 3 massive guys, covered in tattoos and tanning oil, sunbaking.

We found an ATM and withdrew about 2500 Crowns which equals to about $80. This would forever confuse me the whole week we were in Prague. I don’t like paying 400 Crowns at the supermarket; it makes me feel nervous lol.

On our first full day we went into the city to see the town square because that seems to be where tourists are supposed to introduce themselves to every city. Every city apparently has the most beautiful square in Europe, especially at night lol. Normally, we stand there for about 5 minutes and the conversation goes something like this:

Bee: “Oh wow, there’s a building that looks just like that other building”

Smic: *Takes photos* I wonder if we can go inside it

Bee: Yeah, it’s a pretty building

Smic: 10 Euro to go inside, what a rip off...Bee, get in a photo with the building

Bee: *Whinges* don’t take a photo of me, I haven’t straightened my hair today

And then we go and get a drink and some lunch or something.

However, Easter Celebrations were taking place in their town square so it was actually a lot of fun and we hung around there heaps. It was probably the closest we’ll ever get to taking part in a medieval “ye old” celebration. The square was filled with stalls that sold giant kebabs & sausages, corn cobs, spit roasts (hahaha) of ham, potato pancakes, beer, hand decorated eggs, traditional looking souvenirs, sweets etc. They also had a stage which held performances of folk dancing and the square was packed with happy locals and tourists enjoying the weekend and Easter.

Smic and me got some of the spit roasted (hahaha) ham, which was served with brown bread. As always with food over here, it was super tasty. Before and after the festival we walked around the city to get a feel of the city. Super happy me...we found a massive shopping mall - which is really rare in Europe. Smic couldn’t understand why I was so excited to see stores we have back home but he’s a boy so of course he wouldn’t. He’s the one that bought clothes that day anyways!

Around the main square is a maze of countless tiny, little cobbled streets...which is both cute and really annoying. There are mostly souvenir stores and restaurants along them so we had a look at some of the stores. They really like selling these creepy wooden dolls and chess boards in Prague along with the usual t-shirts, beer mugs etc.

That night we decided to go a pub crawl after we got a flyer for one in the town square. We have avoided going to a pub crawl because we were always sceptical about paying someone about $30 each to escort us to a few pubs and a club. However, this pub crawl was discounted due to the start of their high season; they had a power hour at the start of the night where there is all you can drink beer and wine & a shot at every new place we went to. So we decided we’d finally give it a go.

We got to the meeting place at the start of power hour. Although, this was not before being stopped by the competing pub crawl company as they ushered me inside to have a look at the meeting place for their pub crawl. It didn’t look as fun and cost more so we kept going.

We arrived at Bohemia Bagel to be greeted by a cute & friendly American girl that said “y’all” a lot. Smicy and me sat down & drank our first beer and wine by ourselves whilst about 10 Americans all got acquainted with each other at the table across from us. Then we decided to go and watch some other people playing a game of “beer pong”.

SUPER FAST RULES OF BEER PONG:

2 teams standing opposite each other
each team with = 10 beers in front of them like bowling ball pins
opposing team tries to bounce a ping pong ball off a table into any of the other teams 10 beers
if you get the ball in - you drink the beer!

This was entertaining for a while until we decided to get in on the action. A lot of people wanted to play so they decided to change the game to flip cup.

SUPERFAST RULES OF FLIP CUP:

two even lines of people on opposite sides of a table
everyone has a half cup of beer ready to go
the first two people skull their beer and try to flip their cup on the table as quickly as possible
once they’ve succeeded the next person skulls their beer and it goes on
first line to finish wins

I didn’t play because I don’t like beer but I took photos as about 20 Americans, a group of Aussies, South Africans and Canadians got progressively drunker. First destination and half the group are hammered. Power hour is madness!

After that it was time to go to Harleys Cocktail Bar. Smicy got chatting with the South Africans about what else? Cricket, of course. I felt left out so I yelled out “DOMMMMINYYYYYYY” which is the surname of a South African cricket player and so we all started talking about cricket...except for the only cricket fact I know is that Mitchell Johnson is hot so we mainly spoke about the attractiveness of our individual teams hahaha.

Our shots for the night was a clear herbal liquor that is local to the Czech Republic. It tasted like medicine mixed with vodka but it was what we were expecting. It turns out the other pub crawl was in there too so we all partied it up. We spent the whole time at Harleys hanging out with a Canadian couple, Steph and Adrian. They are awesome, awesome, awesome. I don’t know what Adrian and Smic talked about but Steph and I had both hilarious conversations about Amsterdam, her consumption of mushrooms, the difference between Canadians and Americans and pretty much everything under the sun. Then we watched the mega drunk boys on the crawl get into a massive group hug and dance to Rage against the Machine. I found it funny that the boys were all hugging each other instead of picking up all the single girls in Harleys but Smicy assured me this was normal when guys are super drunk.

After that we moved onto a super seedy club. Apparently our pub crawl had expanded to about 100 people as we stumbled along the streets. Lucky for them because they probably all got free shots too! Steph and I debated over the hilarity of people dancing to techno music and decided to bust out some awesome interpretational dance moves. Clubbing in Eastern Europe is really dodgy but exciting and not pretentious at all.

After that we moved onto a bigger club. This was sleazy guys galore. It was 1AM meaning that single males were well drunk and on the hunt for any kind of female species. We had a bit of a dance and then went home...or did we? I’ll leave it there.

All in all the pub crawl turned out to be a definite winner. We thought it might be awkward but we ended up talking to about half the people on the crawl. The way we looked at it, we never would have gone to 4 places in one night and the power hour and shots were enough to drink so it was worth the money. Ahhh, I loved it!

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The next day was hangover central. The day after that though, we bought our Absinth! We found a store called “Absinth Shop”, fitting huh? It is better priced than most of the liquor stores in the city. Smic got a super fancy bottle shaped like a hip flask, which he doesn’t intend to drink but display. You can see the wormwood sitting at the bottom. I am going to drink mine so whoever throws the best party gets the absinth at it!

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After all this we did more touristy things. We went to the fancy pants, more prosperous side of Prague to go to Prague Castle. It is unbelievable how posh this area is compared to the part of Prague we were staying in. When people speak about Eastern Europe they sometimes make it out like it’s run down and there is nothing to see but I couldn’t tell this side of Prague apart from Western Europe. It was a nice area to visit as it was quite modern and felt safer but I’m glad we weren’t staying in that area because it was filled with tourists and I didn’t feel like it showcased much of their culture I guess.

We went to Prague Castle and the cathedral next to it simply for the views you get around the castle. You can see all of Prague and we had a clear blue sky so that’s always good. We didn’t actually go inside the castle but wandered around the surrounding streets because they are posh which of course, makes them nice to walk along.

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The next day we went to these gardens I’d read about in the mountain next to Prague Castle. We were supposed to knock these gardens out the day before but Smic refused to because the line for the train was too long haha. I was super excited because they supposedly had a mirror maze there but they LIED! You can walk around the “maze” in about 1 minute and it’s not really a maze but just a windy walkway. Then there’s just a room filled with those weird mirrors that make you look fat and stuff. We were both sad but decided to make the most of it but taking lotsssssss of pictures. After that we just walked around the gardens until we found a nice patch of grass and had a bit of a nap. You can’t really complain when it’s a beeeeautiful spring day and you’re just chilling out at the top of Prague while the hustle and bustle continues on below you. It was super relaxing.

There were lots of cheeky little trails to follow and explore to get down the mountain so we had fun doing that instead of taking the train back down.

After that we went to check out Lennon Wall, which is a wall covered in John Lennon inspired graffiti. There is more history to it than that but you can Google it if you're interested hehe. I was expecting it to be surrounded by people and blocked off or something but we kinda just half accidently stumbled across it in an “oh, we almost missed it” sorta way. It's a cool little wall though.

This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you about how we finished off a good day and our time in Prague by paddle boating around the lake at the bottom of the mountains and how it was a really good way to see the city but we didn’t have our passports on us so we couldn’t rent a paddleboat. 😞

So that wraps up Prague. We both loved it because it was cheap and there was lots of fun stuff to do.

VIENNA NEXT STOP!

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Photos

My teddy looking out the window
On the way to Prague