April 14-16
I left for Prague Thursday night with my friend Mary Beth. Our flight was delayed, but you can't really expect too much from Wizzair. Yep, it's as cheap as it sounds. Although, in my opinion, it's a step up from Ryanair, but it's a small step...miniscule actually...think of those steps that are barely steps, that make walking up them even harder, the ones you wish didn't exist and you could just push yourself up the hill.
When we got to Prague, the public transportation from the airport into the city was easy enough to figure out. We were starving so we picked up some dinner and walked around to see the city at night. Prague is absolutely, wonderfully beautiful. There were people heading into the museum, all looking pretty classy, but we decided to play dumb tourists and wander in. Sadly, after making past the first set of ticket people, two others stopped us and told us visiting hours were over. Mary Beth told them we just got lost. Naturally, the place we ended up was in a closed museum with fancy looking people...easily mistakeable for a hotel that we could obviously afford.
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| The Museum we wandered into. |
Being utterly exhausted, we went back to the hostel, grabbed some of the brochures and plotted our tomorrow out. We were lucky enough to find a free walking tour! So with our plans set, we fell quickly to sleep.
Friday morning we had time to grab a traditional Prague breakfast at one of their markets (which reminded me of the German Fest in Chicago for Christmas). We headed to the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn which was absolutely gorgeous. It reminded me of the inside of the cathedral in Krakow, which when I'm done with all these posts and I add the pictures, you can agree with me. Architectually, it is different from many of the churches that decorate the streets of Rome. It's history is pretty interesting too. It was built in the 12th century, but underwent a series of reconstructions. The towers aren't actually identical. One is stronger and supposedly represents the man in the family. I think that this could be debated, but that might be the Mighty Mac in me talking...
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| our healthy breakfast |
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| St. Nicholas Church |
Then we looked at the astronomical clock. The astronomical clock is one of Prague's most famous tourist attractions, but sadly it was undergoing repairs while we were there (go figure), but I'm attaching a youtube video of it so you can experience it in exactly the same way I did!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl41yQ5pfe0
We met up with our tour guide near the clock. He use to be an actor, but has lived giving tour in Prague for the past seven years. He was American. Side note: the first thing he said was"I bet all of you are wondering about how we can afford to give free tours, well you tip me at the end". Apparently getting bad, optional tips in Prague is better than his previous life as a bartender in the US. Although, I know some bartenders that make some big bucks....
The Powder Tower is a small tower in Prague that was built in the 1400s. It was used as one of the 13 entrances into Old Town.
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| powder tower |
Anyway, it was an outside tour, so we didn't go into any of the places, but we saw many many things....and got a great history of the culture and tradition.
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| Prague! |
One of my main things on my list of "Need to See in Prague" was the John Lennon Wall. Since Eastern Europe was mostly communist ruled, pop songs were banned and listening to them could land you a spot in jail. John Lennon's songs, because many about freedom, were just not allowed. At night people would go to this wall and grafiti his picture or lyrics to one of his songs hoping not to get caught. It was one of the few ways they could express themselves. The communist police often tried painting over it, but it would repeatidly go back to Lennon. The wall represented more than just a movement for peace, but also for free speech and non violence; it was a movement of the youth in Prague. It is still constantly painted on, so you might not see the same images if you go more than once.
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| my obsession with rivers continues... |
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| castle at night |
The next day, after being well rested, we headed toward the castle. The Castle was absolutely stunning. We didn't do the tour, but we were able to walk around the outside. St. Vitus Cathedral is near the castle, and there are no words really to describe it so I'll just let you look for yourself.
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| St. Vitus |
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| guards at the castle |
The Charles Bridge over the Vltava River was very neat. Artists and merchants were abundant, and it was fun to walk to the otherside of town.
We were pretty tired by this point, so we wandered into a beautiful park and enjoyed the scenery for awhile.
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| pretty nice park, right? |
We were lucky to be there for the Easter Market, which we visited on both days. We were able to eat their traditional street foor (for cheap!! and deliciousness!), but we were also to experience the culture. They had some performances on a stage, and lots of cute stands...almost like the German Christmas Market in the Daily Plaza in December!
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| part of the market |
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| there was only so much room given for the Jewish people in Prague, that their graves were so close together. |
Tid Bits...
1. I found Voldemort in Prague.
2. Prague supposedly has a really cool night life, due to exhaustion hanging over us from Krakow the weekend before, a busy week at school, and our constant on the go attitude in Prague, we crashed early instead of going out.
