Praha!

Finally here is my post about Prague! Sorry about the delay. I had a big math test this weekend so I was basically a hermit last week and I wasn't allowed to do anything that wasn't eating, running, or studying. But I went to Prague just over a week ago now and met my friend from high school, Amy, there!

Friday (March 8th)
I left my apartment at like 7:30 which was the earliest I've been up in a long time. It was early. But I had to catch a bus to the airport. Everything went so smoothly and the flight was ultra empty. I had no one in my row or immediately in front of or behind me. It was simply marvelous. Now getting to the hostel was a bit of an adventure. The hostel we were staying at was recommended by Charlotte (see London post) and everything looked great online. It also said online it's easy to get to from the airport. Apparently to Czech people easy is a twenty minute bus ride, two different subways, a tram ride, and a ten minute walk. There were just so many directions! But it was really inexpensive which was a nice change of pace. After a slight detour taking the tram in the wrong direction, I made it safely to the hostel which was as great as the website described. It was definitely geared toward a young crowd and was very welcoming. I got there about 6 hours before Amy did so I had plenty of free time to go exploring and check out the city. I found some cool things. Firstly, Prague is much more dirty than any city in Sweden. There was a lot of trash on the streets and graffiti. Everywhere. I first ventured to the top of a hill where I found a fantastic lookout and the National Monument.

Graffiti! And my lookout tower.

View from the lookout. If you look really closely you can see an Allianz building. I thought that was cool. It also reminded me that Allianz is a German based company so European branches make sense.

Part of the National Monument on Vitkov Hill.

Then I wandered the other direction toward what I thought was the city center. Turns out, I was wrong but I did find some cool things. One of which being the Žižkov Television Tower. From far away it looks a little Brave New World-esque with the silver and general weird shape. Looking a bit closer, there appeared to be giant ants or something attached to the building. With even closer examination, I discovered that they were actually babies. That's right. Prague has a weird TV tower with babies crawling up the side. 

TV Tower

In Prague, the city planners like to put things on top of hills so walking was exhausting. Up and down, up and down. Finally after a few hours of walking up and down and all around Prague, I headed back to the hostel. I met a few German girls that were so great and had just spent the whole week in Prague.
The hostel had a free dinner of pasta so obviously, I took advantage of that. Finally, Amy arrived! Since she spent the whole day travelling, we just hung out in the hostel. There was a bar in the basement so we went down there for a beer and met others staying in the hostel! It was super fun. We called it an early night because we had a HUGE day ahead of us. Since we were only in Prague from Friday to Sunday, we tried to see everything on Saturday.

Saturday (March 9th)
We got up and walked to the Old Town Square. On our walk there we stopped, as was suggested, at Bohemia Bagel. It was a fantastically filling breakfast. And so cheap! Only like $5 for a bacon, egg, and cheese bagel and hot chocolate with whipped cream.

Here are our bagels with hot chocolate. Possibly the best hot chocolate I've ever had. 

We finally made it to the Old Town Square to catch a free walking tour of the city. Free tour? Yes. The guides only make money from tips. Our tour guide was the best. She was an American that has been living in Prague for the past 4 years. Her name was Andrea. The tour began at the Astronomical Clock Tower.

Clock Tower

The clock tower has lots going on. The top face has an astronomical dial which shows the place of the sun and moon in the sky. For all you horoscope fans out there, it also includes a zodiac ring. Behind that there is an actual clock face with Roman numerals. 

The lower face on the clock is a calendar. It includes pictures for each month which represent a different task in the harvest season. Outside of the circles, every day of the year is listed along with a name. This creates Czech Name Days. It's basically another reason to celebrate a person. Traditionally, people give you flowers, buy you drinks, and wish you a happy name day when your day comes around each year! Here is a Wikipedia page that has the Name Days listed. Find you name, celebrate your name day! 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_days_in_the_Czech_Republic

Also in the Old Town Square we saw Church of Mother of God before Týn which dates back to the 14th century. If you look closely at the two towers at the top of the church you will see that they are not identical. Andrea told us this was intentional. The towers are supposed to be different. One represents Adam and the other Eve. Adam is on the right and is a little bigger and masculine. While Eve is on the right, skinnier and more feminine. 

The church poking out in the background is the Church of Mother of God before Tyn.

We got to see the Art Nouveau Municipal House. On the bottom floor of the Municipal House, there is a restaurant. This is the restaurant in the movie Triple X with Vin Diesel. Connected to that is the Powder Tower which is of Gothic style. It doesn't exactly fit with the Municipal House but Prague has strange architecture (see television tower). It was used to store gunpowder in the 17th century which is how it got its name. We saw the Jewish Quarter and the Old New Synagogue. Since we were touring on a Saturday, the Jewish quarter was rather quiet. We saw the Estates Theater which is where Mozart conducted the world premiere of his opera Don Giovanni. We also saw Wenceslas Square! The Czech Republic is a funny place because even though there are ancient buildings dating back hundreds of years, the country is only 20 years old. Also because of the many different influences that have been in power of the area, Prague has very unique and somewhat mismatched architecture. You can tell that looking through the pictures.

Powder Tower

Municipal House

Wenceslas Square

 After our tour, we wandered the streets on our own to find the Charles' Bridge, the Prague Castle, and the Lennon Wall. Of course, since it was a Saturday, it was PACKED with tourists but still fantastic. As you can tell from my pictures, the weather wasn't that great but we wanted to see as much as we could! Construction of the bridge was started under the rule of King Charles VI, the namesake of the bridge. 

The entrance to the Charles' Bridge

From the bridge, we could see the Prague Castle waaaaaay up on a hill.

We then made our way to the Lennon Wall. Since the murder of John Lennon in 1980, the wall has been a political focus for Czech youth with messages of peace and love. There are a fair number of lyrics from Beatles' songs on the wall. The communist Czech secret police would whitewash the wall after messages and graffiti was painted on the wall but it was always repainted.

We found a love lock bridge! There were some on the Charles' Bridge but it was too crowded to get a decent picture of it but we found this little guy with tons of locks on it.

Our Czech Dinner!

 For an early dinner we went to a restaurant suggested by Andrea. I had dumplings, Czech beer, cabbage and sauerkraut (I guess I like sauerkraut now!) and pork with bacon bits. It as all delicious and extremely filling.

We went back to the hostel to clean up and prepare for our big night! We had heard about the Prague Pub Crawl. At the first pub we met some other Americans that were studying in France. At the first pub there was an open bar so we had lots of free drinks! At each of the following pubs, we got to skip the lines and we got a free welcome drink. Our final destination on the pub crawl was 

Karlovy Lázně which is central Europe's largest night club. We got to skip the line! 

Karlovy Lázně

Inside was crazy! There were five floors of different types of music. It was huge!

We obviously had to check out the Ice Pub. 

They provided jackets and gloves!

The Ice Pub was definitely a highlight but not as cool as the Ice Bar at the Ice Hotel. So much ice. Somewhere in the giant mega club, I lost my phone. But some nice Dutch boy found it and is mailing it to me here in Uppsala. 

Sunday (March 10)

Sunday was a travel day. I had a flight a little after noon and since it took about an hour to get to the airport, that killed the morning and didn't allow us to see anything other than the public transport back to the airport. 

Prague was fantastic! I had high expectations because everyone has talked it up so much but even though I lost my egg chap stick and my phone, I still had a great time! I'm so glad I got to meet up with Amy and hang out in central Europe. 

Jann and Julie arrive in less than 3 days and then we head west to Gothenburg! 

TTFN (Ta ta for now!)