Rainy Day in Prague

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Old Town Square During the Day

Things have been great so far...aside from one: all the public smoking that is allowed over here and two: being lectured and sort of yelled at for wanting to go out on my own to go to Munich for Oktoberfest. My sister kind of tries to take on this mother role and she gets pissed!! Still, I try to just ignore the drama and enjoy my time. Today we got up and headed out into Old Town Prague. We did a lot of walking around....the morning was kind of slow and we just shopped around in several crystal shops...they are everywhere here! Then we headed down to go to Charles Bridge. There is soooo much to see here...even just walking down some alley way you see some of the coolest buildings and amazing architecture. I love the feeling I get just walking through the narrow streets and looking in the neat little shops they have. I can't help but smile at the fact that I am in Prague. It almost feels like home, to be honest. I don't feel like I'm too out of place....aside from the fact that everyone here is speaking a different language, and quite honestly I don't know what the traditional Czech language even sounds like, because all the people around me seem to be visiting from other countries as well. The streets are crowded with people from all over the world, and I can't even imagine being in this place during the "high season". The environment is fairly relaxed here...lots of busy people, but haven't encountered too many rude people. Anyway, back to the days events. So we walked across the Charles Bridge and on the other side we took a little stroll up to the top of the tower. Today was actually quite gloomy unfortunately, but I still thought it was beautiful. Again, I took pictures, but cannot post them from this computer so I will as soon as I can. After that we decided it was time to grab a bite to eat. I told my fellow travel companions that I wanted to eat some traditional Czech food. So we found a place and order some good old Czech food...I actually tried baked duck, smoked ham, and roasted pork with dumplings and cabbage...surprisingly I did enjoy it...yes picky me. Kirsten has this coconut creamy chicken thing with potatoe croquettes(which basically was deep fried mashed potatoes I think), quite yummy. The only difficulty we ran into here was the check and how much we should leave for a tip....for the record 10% is standard. So after that we walked around a bit more, up to the Prague Castle, and down some little local streets. Everything is great! We headed back to the hostel, and hung out for a bit. As my sister slept, Kirst and I headed out to go to the local supermarket for some dinner. The supermarket is actually underground here, and it was quite interesting, because we couldn't read what anything was. We ended up grabbing some bread from the bakery, some fruit, brie for Amanda, and we picked out some meat from the deli that appeared to be turkey. So we came back to the hostel and ate up our dinner, then we all ended up crashing for about an hour or two....when I woke up it was dark...and I was anxious to go out and explore. So I got up, woke the other two, and we headed out. After we all got over our little grumpy stage we stopped into a local coffee shop/bar. We order some lattes and desserts, and Kirst and I each took a shot of Absynth. It was an interesting drink, that probably would have been a little more fun if we had chose to have more than just the one shot. So we continued on and walked back to the Charles Bridge, so we could see it at night....that was a fun little journey. Eventually we ended up back in the old town square sitting outside and enjoying the atmosphere, I ordered the infamous Pilsner Urquell, and Manda and Kirst drank their latte and hot chocolate. Then we just walked our way back to our hostel...now I plan to just hang out for a bit and hopefully meet some new people!!! MUAH!

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