I went to Prague!

Hey everyone, I know I should probably get Metz up here because I went there awhile ago, but I figured you'd all like to see Prague, plus I want to get it up while I still remember what everything is.

The journey started with an all nighter in the airport (I'm starting to get used to these) with my friend Mitch. We flew to Prague Saturday morning and stayed though Tuesday morning.

Money Mitch and I took out at the airport. They gave us crowns that were too big to pay for our bus ticket so we had to go to Subway and eat to get change. We felt super rich! Although 1000 crowns is only about 45 euros.

After the bus ride from the airport we took the Metro into the square! Here is our very first view of Prague!

The astronomical clock tower, you'll see this many more times.

After checking out the square and buying bus tour tickets we decided we were tired and needed to go to the hostel to check in, here's a picture of the square just next to the hostel.

After checking in we decided to wander into the direction of center town to catch our bus tour. Here's the pics as we wandered!

This little statue here was made entirely out of wax and candles.

And we found the National Theater, next to a statue...

Entrance to the National Theater..

National Theater from the riverside

And then we found the river, and the bridge and the castle in the background.

Me bundled up like crazy in about 3 shirts, coat, scarf, gloves, and the Prague hats we bought (that we probably also overpaid for but we were so cold we didn't care).

After wandering around the city a bit we made it back for our bus tour! When we arrived there was a riot going on just inside the square.

I've decided not to put up pictures that I took in the bus because they weren't that great and I saw everything again anyway.... The bus took us up to the castle. Here's some pictures of the entrance to the castle and the little square just in front of it.

This building looks 3-D when you look straight on with all the little pyramid paintings.

The television/ radio tower? I forget but the white building in the background does one of those things and is also the tallest building in Prague I believe.

View of the town before we went into the castle.. the haze is caused by the cold, it was a perfectly sunny day.

Us walking in..

Square just inside the castle, all the buildings are used as museums now and you have to pay to get in, so we only saw the outside.

Pictures of the famous cathedrale that is in the center of the castle. The castle was sort of built around it.

Pictures of more of the castle after we left the cathedrale, notice how the architecture changes because they kept adding on through the centuries.

My toes were litterally frozen stuck to my boots at this point. From here we ducked into a cafe for a warm drink for a few minutes.

Then we ventured back out into the cold to see the Street of Gold. Notice the size of the houses. The king used to take in alchemists, and the houses here belong to the workers that used to serve the visitors of the king and the kings palace. To get an idea of how big the doors were, I fit perfectly through the doorway... the rooms on the inside couldn't have been more than 10 ft. by 10 feet. And now all the old houses are stores where you can buy things.

View of Prague from the other side of the castle.

That was pretty much day one. We were cold and tired so we decided to go to a restaurant just next to our hostel for dinner and then called it a night. The next morning we decided to get some pictures of the square and church just next to our hostel and then wander over to the famous Lenin Wall and Charles Bridge.


Picture of the square

Old church we found as we wandered back towards the river.

The Dancing House, designed by a Canadian architect. I have no idea what is inside.

We crossed the river and found a small little island with some really pretty views of the Theater, Prague and the river.

On the other side of the river ...

Here you can see that each house has two sets of numbers. This is because Prague actually used to be a bunch of different smaller cities before it merged as one. They still kept the old addresses when they added the new so each house has two addresses listed. Today the city is still divided into four sections, Old Town, New Town, Lesser Town, and I think the 4th one is the Castle area but I'm not 100% sure anymore.

Stairs with statue people walking down!

This is the church where the child of Prague is located. Essentially the child of Prague is this doll of Jesus that was given to a Spanish queen when she married the king of Prague. And now all the countries (mostly those that have Spanish roots) spend lots of money making clothing out of gold and precious jewels for the doll. Inside there's a museum where you can see all the clothes for the doll that people wasted money on. If I didn't find it so ridiculous to spend more money on a doll than we do on humans, maybe I would have enjoyed it a bit more. There was also a shop beneath the museum, and the people in front of us legit spent a few hundred euros buying things in this church. I really hope all that money went to charity.

After visiting the doll, we stumbled upon St. Nicks cathedrale and the mounument just outside. What I love about Prague is that you never know what's just around the corner, and there's always a surprise waiting.

After the cathedrale, that we didn't walk around in because you had to pay, we found the Lenin wall. Here you can see where people have decorated the wall with bike locks and graffiti.

After the Lenin wall we decided to do the Charles Bridge, here is the entrance to the bridge on one side.

Going under the bridge..

View of the entrance after going under and getting onto the bridge.

There's about 20 - 30 statues on the bridge, I only put up pictures of a few of them. The one just below had two spots where people were rubbing the dog, and the woman. I'm not sure why they were rubbing them but I'm assuming it was for good luck, so I rubbed them too.

View of the castle from the bridge

Heading towards the gate on the other side of the bridge now..

Underneath the gate on the other side.

And when you get out of the gate there's another square with some cool monuments and buildings.

After all that walking Mitch and I were hungry so we stopped for Goulash and dumplings, and the traditional Apple Tart.

After dinner we headed over to the Hard Rock Cafe where Mitch got his beer glass, and then we did some shopping. I bought crystals. Prague is known for crystals and you can find them everywhere for super cheap! After the shopping night settled on the town and we headed back to the Old Town square to get some night views.

After the night time sight seeing we headed back to the hotel where we signed up for a bar crawl. I didn't get any pictures of the bars but we had a really great time. Our guide was from Paraguay, and there were only two other people with us who were from Austria. One thing to know about Prague is that it is a city on top of a city. Some hundred years ago they decided to fill all the buildings with dirt and build on top of the old city to have better protection from floods. Then one day someone discovered that there were buildings everywhere under the buildings and dug the dirt out. The buildings are so well preserved that today you can walk through them on tours, eat in a medieval house, or as we did, go to a bar and walk down a bunch of stairs and drink in what was Prague hundreds of years ago.


The next morning (day 3) we woke up late, and decided to get lunch. We found a small rock and roll restaurant that was also underground. Here's the chicken with mashed potatos and lime sauce that I had!

From the restaurant we headed back into old town square to see the clock strike the hour... and climb up it to get good views of Prague. While we were waiting we got starbucks... voila our Prague names..

The astronomical clock...

When the clock strikes the hour all the saints come out of the windows in the top and make around to say hi to the people down below, here's some pictures of the saints. Then after the saints have made their rounds a live trumpet player stands at the top and plays a little song.

After watching the saints we headed up into the tower for view of Prague. Here are the views of the city.

From there we wandered into the Jewish Quarter. In Jewish quarter they have the oldest synagogue in Europe. We didn't go into anything because it was like 20 euros for a ticket into everything. But we did walk around and get some nice pictures.

The oldest synagogue in Europe..

From there we decided to head to Power Gate, which is left over from the wall that used to surround Prague before they tore it down to expand the city. On our way we found the wax museum!

Powder gate as we approach..

On the other side you have one of Europe's largest shopping malls...

And the Municipal House

From the Municipal House and the gate we headed over to the Wenceslas Square. Which is Famous for it's shopping and the young Jan Palach who burned himself to protest the invasion of the Soviet Union.

The National Museum is also located here.

The monument they put up for Palach... later some idiot tourist put a picture of Whitney Houston with a bunch of candles on the monument...

Looking back down the square from the monument.

From there we headed back to Old Town square to catch our underground tour. I didn't take any pictures but signed up to have a bunch emailed to me. The email has not arrived yet, but hopefully I can post some pics once it does.

Night views of the Gate the Municipal House Opera house and the National Museum that we took after our underground tour was finished.

After the night views of the city , we headed back to our hostel to get some sleep because we had to be up at 3: 45 in the morning to catch our plane back into Paris. Overall it was a great trip to Prague but I would love to come back in the spring or summer some day, and actually have time to check out all the great museums in town. Hope you all enjoyed the pictures! I am heading to Basel and Zurich on Monday to stay with some of my cousins old Nannys. I'll keep you updated!