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Published: December 23rd 2007
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Church of Our Lady in front of Týn
The gothic church visible from the old town square, probably my favourite building in the whole place. Very Rapunzel. After all the amazing places I've been fortunate enough to visit this year, I think I would have to rate Prague one of the highest. I haven't walked around with my mouth gaping like that since I was in Venice. When I first arrived it seemed like just another European city with maybe slightly different looking buildings, but as I got further and further into the heart of it all I was more and more blown away, especially by the town centre. It’s a gothic wonderland of castles, towers and spires.
I took the bus from Strasbourg to Prague as it was by far the cheapest way to get there and only took nine hours. For the ride over I left at 9pm which meant trying to sleep overnight but I’m never really good at sleeping on public transport. I wanted to take some of my could-knock-out-a-horse hay fever tablets but I didn’t want to be groggy when I arrived so I just kept trying to close my eyes and hope for the best. And just when I finally started dosing off we were rudely awoken by Czech border control checking passports. Bastards! But that would be one of the
Sunset - Charles Bridge
One of the rare clear days where I could actually see the sun setting. last times that ever happened because my return trip was on the first day that Prague entered the Schengen, a border free zone within Europe making it much easier to pass through. I was actually pretty excited to know I was one of the first people to cross the border freely!
Apart from wanting to visit Prague, the main reason I went was to see Karolina one more time before heading home. Although we’d already caught up when she was studying in Brussels, it was nice to finally be able to visit her in her home town. I stayed with her and her family in their apartment and they were all so lovely to me. Karolina had a lot of work and uni to do most days, so she pointed out a few good places to see and I generally explored on my own during the day and we’d meet up in the evenings. It’s not an overly large city, but it’s so compact it can take days of walking around to fully appreciate the details. The Old Town Square was probably my favourite area and if I ever got tired I’d find a seat on the side and
soak up the atmosphere of the Christmas markets filling the square. Of course, most famous and most touristy is the Charles Bridge, but even with all those tourists it’s still very beautiful. Incidentally the Charles Bridge was named after the king who built it, King Charles IV, who used to be called Wenceslaus before he was Charles. I thought that maybe he inspired the Christmas carol, but as it turns out it was about a different Wenceslaus, the Duke of Bohemia, but he was also born in Prague so it’s still the city where the carol originates.
Prague castle is also very cool, and supposedly one of the biggest castles in Europe. Karolina took me over there one evening - and when I say evening I could mean 5pm because the sun starts setting about 3:30pm - and from up on the hill there’s a spectacular view of Prague all lit up. I also went over during the day but unfortunately it was pretty foggy so the view wasn’t so great. In general the weather was quite cold and foggy with an average of about -6°, although I was fortunate enough to get one sunny day which gave the
Rooftop view
To make the most of the sunset I climbed the Charles Bridge tower to get a 360° view of the stunning Prague skyline. city a lot more colour.
On one particularly freezing day I felt that I couldn’t do much walking around so I decided to stay inside going to museums and shopping centres. And I’m not being a silly girl about the cold either, I’m talking FREEZING. I was wearing three pairs of socks with boots that had furry stuff on the inside, thermal leggings under my jeans, about four or five tops, TWO of which were thermal, a huge puffy quilted jacket, a scarf, gloves, and a thermal beanie and I was still cold. Any piece of skin that was exposed ruined it for the rest of my body. I had to make sure that one of my tops was tucked into my jeans or else the cold air would sneak in under my jacket. I had to wear my scarf around my face and nose otherwise it felt like I’d been injected with botox and couldn’t express emotion. And by the way, now I understand why Rudolph has a bright red nose - he’s freezing! But I think the worst was my feet, my poor feet who couldn’t fit another pair of socks under those boots and would just
freeze up - every time I went inside somewhere warm after about ten minutes I would get pins and needles in my feet due to the warm blood slowly coming back. Luckily I really enjoyed seeing the Mucha museum and spent a lot of time in there hiding from the cold!
In the evenings I’d meet Karolina and we’d often go to the Christmas markets and get warm wine, go for dinner and drinks, walk around various parts of the city and she’d point out important or interesting things along the way. It was really nice to have someone on the inside, so to speak, to show me around. To top it all off, on the final night we went to the opera to see The Barber of Seville. It was a really good opera, really funny - and even better was that it had both Czech and English subtitles. It was also really cheap, like so much of Prague. The opera tickets worked out to be about (in Australian dollars) $7, meals were often no more than $10-12 and that’s including wine, and museums and tourist sights were also relatively cheap. It’ll be a shame if they end
up getting the Euro because right now that Koruna goes a long way!
All in all it was a spectacular week and I would recommend Prague to anyone. But I think the part I liked best was the fact that five years ago when I met Karolina in Paris I said that one day I’d visit her in Prague and now I have. I think it’s amazing that we managed to keep in touch all these years and that I had the opportunity to actually make that statement come true. One of the most satisfying things about this year has been the fact that so many of my dreams have become a reality. The saying “It’s a dream come true” is so cliché, but when it happens it’s an amazing feeling. And I couldn’t think of a more apt way to describe everything that’s happened to me this year. With only two weeks left in France I feel like I’m almost ready to come home and start planning my next adventure!
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Another Wonderful Entry
Wow again. What an interesting year we have spent sharing your adventures - thankyou.