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Castle Hill
Castle hill from the Charles Bridgeyesterday was an early morning after a night from hell. first there was the drunk girl singing alanis morisette outside along with other drunks and their chatter...then was the tolling of some stupid bells...then was the 2:30 intrusion of more roommates who decided to make as much noise as possible and shine flashlights everywhere...last but not least was the freight train snoring that woke us up around 4:30...earplugs hardly helped...
after having a breakfast of warm milk with corn flakes and tang, we showered and then headed back to bohemia bagel since kasia was still hungry. i wrote postcards and journaled. then it was off to albert's, the grocery store, since we had decided to be frugal. i bought dried fruit, nuts, some kind of cheese-bacon bread, and a bunch of chocolate. then it was off to prague castle...
the trek up to the castle was uphill, and the weather was quite warm today. basically we were ready to collapse by the time we got there. the only thing that kept me going was seeing the romanian embassy on the way :-) after stopping so kasia could eat yet again, we went and bought our tickets for the main
Close-up
Close-up of Prague Castle "attractions"
first stop was st. vitus' cathedral. unlike 3 or 4 years ago or whenever i was here last, there was pretty much no construction at all. the inside was your typical enormous gothic type deal with some pretty cool stained glass and whatnot. thanks to our photo pass (gotta find yet another way to make money, just like everywhere else) we could take pictures. there was no sign of our old tour guide and her babbling about "deep penetration" aka defensatration. quite sad...
next stop was the old palace...kind of underwhelming since the royal throne was like out on loan to some other exhibit and stuff like that. i dont think i saw the 'old palace' last time, so at least that was a plus. we watched a movie about the castle for a bit and then headed out to the basilica. kind of lame, but it was old so that at least made it cool. we were still exhausted so we stopped at a little cafe place inside the castle and i had myself an iced coffee while kasia ate a magnum ice cream bar.
the powder tower was basically nothing, so we continued onward
Down The Bridge...
Looking down the Charles Bridge... toward golden lane, where kafka once resided. i remember taking a picture with karen there with those masks last time. i really shouldn't be buying anything more, so we just walked on through. after that we took a lil rest and camped out at a park at the bottom of castle hill for a while. This was after struggling through hordes of the most obnoxious Americans I have ever encountered. It's no wonder why people hate us...
After an hour or so chilling back at the hostel, we walked back toward Wenceslaus square. We were tired/bored enough that we went to go see what movies were playing for later. We stopped for dinner at a little cafe where we both got nalesniki/crepes/whatever they call them in czech. mine was with spinach and ham. pretty good. We stopped in a few shops where I stopped myself from buying Czech Puma gear and then decided we needed to take things to a new (lower) level and see a movie. Silent Hill it was...pretty ridiculous movie that didn't make all too much sense, but it kept us entertained. Like the theatre in Gdansk, it was totally spotless and high tech. Then it
St. Vitus Cathedral
Exterior of the Cathedral was back to the hostel where we chatted with those girls again and went to sleep...
This morning, after finally getting a good night's rest, I got up and showered. I came back to Kasia still sleeping, so I waited around writing and whatnot while she got ready. We finally left sometime before 11 and went for breakfast/early lunch at a restaurant in the main square. I ended up with ridiculously delicious fruit dumplings in a sweet poppy seed sauce with whipped cream, plus a ledova kava aka kawa mrozona. We sat near a Polish family and it was surprisingly great to hear them babbling amidst this czech nonsense...
Next stop was the train station to buy tickets for kutna hora, where there's an ostuary made of human bones. We had to wait an hour or so for the train after the people working there were of absolutely NO help. The train was only an hour and we made it there in one piece. The town of Kutna Hora looked pretty shitty a la Elite Hunting Headquarters, but we managed to find the small Church. It didn't look like much on the outside, but inside it was fantastic.
Vitus
Inside St. Vitus' Cathedral Though smaller than I had imagined, the interior was designed with all these ornate decorations made from an estimated 40.000 human skeletons. The current "design" is from 1870. My favorite part was when this stupid woman wouldn't get out of our way so we could take pictures so Kasia started flashing pictures in her face. She got the picture :-) We stayed and took pictures and whatnot for about half an hour before taking a little break at a cafe and heading back to the train station.
While on the way back it started to rain for a while, but it was done by the time we got off. We had to switch trains, and after sitting in our compartment the woman across from us pulled out a bottle of gin and started chugging it. Rather amusing. After getting back we took the metro to the other main train station to find out about our train tickets to Budapest. I didn't have my passport on me, so we'll have to go back tomorrow and buy them.
Once that was done with, we decided to eat Lebanese for dinner and headed to the place we had seen a sign
Shiny!
A fun shiny thing inside the cathedral. Pardon my ignorance for not konwing what it is for. We split a delicious plate of all kinds of things like hummus, tabouli, kibbi, falafel, etc. etc washed down with a nice Czech beer. Then we headed back across the Charles bridge for some quality internet time.
Tomorrow we plan to get some laundry done and then take the tram to the hotel movenpick where I stayed last time. We're going there to eat of course, since they had great ice cream and smoked salmon. Then we'll check out that giant grocery store and who knows what else. It'll be a chill last day in Prague...
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Suzy
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Dumplings
Your dumplings look like volcanic rocks!I hope they tasted better than they looked. In any event, I truly enjoy checking out all the food that you are sampling. Glad you are having a wonderful adventure.