Czech Repbulic: Prague

Hello again! Miss you all and love you, hope everyone had an amazing weekend!

We arrived back from Prague this morning at around 9AM. Luckily for me I can fall asleep pretty much anywhere, so I was able to sleep in the taxi to the airport, in the actual airport, on the plane, and on the metro ride home! Unfortunately, all my friends are not as skilled at sleeping as I am so we have a lot of cranky people right now. We needed to leave for the airport at 3AM, and the superbowl aired at about 12:30 here, so we just stayed up and watched that (yay! the Steelers lost!) although they didn't play the typical superbowl commercials since we were in Europe it was still really fun!

Prague is easily my favorite place that I have seen thus far in Europe! We left for the airport on Friday at around 5AM. This was my first flight in Europe so I was a little nervous (keep in mind that we book through RyanAir and WizzAir as well as other cheap European airlines so we were not exactly sure what to expect!) This trip I was accompanied by: Tricia and Danielle (my 2 roommates/best friends from Clemson), Bruce, Brendan, James, Johnson, Kyle, and Josh. A group of nine is a good number to travel with because normally people want to do different things and when you travel in small groups it gets risky breaking up into solo or partner trips, in our case we could do a group of 4 and a group of 5 and thats perfectly safe for wandering around the city. To my surprise, the plane was great! Plenty of legroom, no turbulence and they made all the announcements in multiple languages including English - it was perfect! The flight was also right on time and security was not an issue, it didn't take us too long to get through. We arrived at Prague around lunchtime and figured out the bus system and eventually got to our hostel. The hostel was in a good location - about a 5 minute walk to the Charles Bridge (more on that later- its beautiful!) and just outside the major touristy part of Prague so the food around us was cheaper! First thing we did was exchange our money from Euros to Crown. This was interesting because 1 crown is equal to 25 euro, so basically we'd be paying 200crown for a lunch sandwich, and often carrying around 2,000 crown bills!

The Czech food was AMAZING! We made it our goal to eat at places that had authentic Czech Cuisine! Some of the meals I had included: Pork Steak with Potato Dumplings, Cheese Spinach and Mashed Potatoes...Chicken pieces with  Bread Dumplings and Beef, goulash (I'm sure I spelt that wrong), duck, hot wine (yes, they heat up their wine they don’t serve it chilled or at room temperature), a lot of cabbage, homemade kielbasa (yuum), cinnamon rolls (they sell them everywhere in the streets) and all kinds of delicious desserts. They also serve soup with most meals so we got to have delicious potato soup as well as onion soup and duck soup. Their food was so good and each meal was very filling.

The sights: on Friday everyone pretty much wanted to sleep but me, Tricia, Bruce and James decided we’re only in Prague for three days and we can catch up on sleep some other time so we went exploring. The main tourist attraction is the Charles Bridge.. a huge bridge that crosses the river that separates the new town and old town in Prague. The bridge is covered in statues and just had a completely beautiful view. All along it were street vendors and musicians playing traditional music (very similar to Polka- Nanny would have loved it!). Once we got across the bridge we were into the part of Prague where the largest medieval castle is located (Prague Castle). We decided we wanted a good view of the city so we payed a few crowns to see an exhibition about the Secret Police and Communist Party/Nazis in Prague. The tour/exhibition ended in a large tower that was used by the Secret Police to spy on the citizens of Prague. I found it extremely interesting to learn about this Prague history because its all so recent- communism ended just before I was born in 1989… that’s insane! While at the top of that tower we spotted an American flag off in the distance. There appeared to be stairs going to it and it was on top of a large hill on a pretty building that looked like it could possibly be a monument. It took us about a half hour to climb all the stairs that led to it only for us to find out it was the embassy and “trespassers will be arrested.” That was a failure on our part, but even so the view from it was beautiful overlooking the river and the bridge. Next we wandered around in the souvenir shops and we explored the city a bit more and then met back up and went out to dinner with our friends. We went on a pub crawl that evening which ended at a five-story club that overlooked the river/Charles Bridge which was pretty cool.

The next day we got our tour times jumbled up and ended up missing the tour. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because we ended up finding the most beautiful view of the city (as you’ll see in the pictures.) On the top of the hill that overlooks the city there is this Eiffel tower-ish looking building, which we ended up being able to climb up to get yet another amazing view…simply breathtaking, the pictures honestly do not do it justice. Next to the Eiffel tower building (we never did quite find out what it was!) there was a beautiful cathedral and a park to explore. We wandered around the city and hiked a bit in the hills then went to tour the “castle.” This was kind of disappointing for all of us because we were expecting something a little bit more like Cinderella and in actuality it was just a lot of buildings enclosed together such as a church, the president’s house, shops restaurants and other offices which all make up the “Prague castle.” It was still beautiful despite the fact that it wasn’t the castle we had been picturing! We also stopped in a Beatle’s museum as well as a museum of all art by blind artists, which was really inspiring and amazing. After that the daylight was fading so we went and got some dinner and then hung out with some people at our hostel before going out for the night.
The next morning we woke up early and wandered the city a little more before beginning the 4-hour walking tour around Prague. We saw things such as: the Prague Clock tower, the old and new towns of Prague, the spots where the velvet revolution took place, the place where the student burnt himself in protest of communism, the Jewish quarters, the Prague castle, music halls and much, much more. It was amazing and so interesting to hear about all the rich history of prague…and all so recent! Everyone we met had a story to tell and plenty of memories, I met an older couple who explained the velvet revolution and the woman said she could vividly remember crying with her mother when the Germans came on the radio and announced that Prague was back to communism in 1968. Everyone in Prague struck me as extremely friendly, always willing to open up about their past (they are very proud of all that has occurred there) and very willing to help you find your way around!

In the Jewish quarter we visited the gravesites of many of the Jew’s killed during Hitler’s reign, as well as the only complete Jewish synagogue in Prague that was allowed to stay up because Hitler was going to make it his “museum” as the last remaining place where Jew’s were allowed to worship. We also went into a Jewish museum where the walls were covered by paintings done by Czech children at Auschwitz in secrecy and then buried in suitcases on the grounds of Auschwitz and later recovered and returned to Prague. It was quite humbling and truly beautiful, amidst all the horror and fear that these children must have been feeling almost all of the paintings were of them with their families smiling or playing outside or other upbeat, happy images.

We then went to a nice dinner at a restaurant where an accordion player played throughout the evening, it was really fun and the servings were huge and delicious! After the dinner we travelled up to the spot where the beautiful view was to see the city at night and drank some hot wine while overlooking the view and stargazing. We headed to a sports bar to catch some of the superbowl before returning to Brussels. Hope you enjoy the blog and I’m adding the Prague pictures soon! Miss and love you all, hope your weekend was great! Next trip: Barcelona for Carnival :)