Praha!

I had an awesome time in Prague, although my bank account doesn’t think so. I spent so much money that Citibank thought my credit card was stolen!!! Whoops! Most of it was presents for people, and I should get some of the money back on the beautiful Bohemian crystal wine glasses that I bought for my parents at least. So ya, we shopped.
We took an overnight train on Friday night which involved finding our couchettes at midnight in Dortmund – the room had two other people in it who had the heat cranked way up, it was like 30 degrees, so I fixed that quickly – and then stopping in the middle of the night at all the major trains stations in Berlin (there were about 5 stops in 2 hours and I woke up at every stop and start). We arrived in Dresden at 7 something in the morning and changed to our Praha train, which got us there about 10:30am. Unfortunately for us, we got off at the first train station, where everyone else seemed to get off too. We thought it was the main train station downtown, but after walking 3km to get to our hotel only 600m away, we were pretty convinced that it was the wrong station.
We spent Saturday walking around the Old Town and some of the New Town. We looked in some clothing stores, as I was all excited about buying cheap clothes. Well that sucked. The clothes were more expensive that in Bremen. So that idea went right down the drain. Cari ended up finding a load of clothes though and she wasn’t even looking for them! We had lunch in the Old Town – I had a crazy Prague sausage that looked like it was a hot dog that had exploded in the microwave, and that’s pretty much what it tasted like too. (see my pics) I also tried out the local Pilsner as Prague is apparently the home of Pilsner. It was all right, considering I don’t really like Pilsner, and damn cheap – like a euro for 300mL. The rest of the day we spent exploring, searching for an army store Cari had been in last time, finding it and not finding the flasks that we wanted, finding the flasks in a tourist store and realizing they were about 4 times as much as they were in Russia, etc. etc. Oh ya, we also saw the Astronomical Clock go off at noon. Apparently it was supposed to be exciting, but it sucked ass. I mean the one in Strasbourg was 100 times better, this was just boring and about a million tourists were standing around being totally impressed by it! Obviously they hadn’t been to Strasbourg (or Vienna). Speaking of tourists, I’m pretty sure all the tourists in Western Europe decided to descend on Praha last weekend. There were so many people there, you could barely walk. No wonder I had to search about 150 hotels to find one that had a room. However, the view from the top of Clock Tower was pretty cool.
Saturday night we just chilled and ended up watching a swing/jazz band play in the café of our hotel. Sunday we decided to make our way across Charles Bridge and over to the area near the Prague Castle. Again, it was super busy, but I can understand why. The weather was absolutely gorgeous the city is very pretty and full of life, and the food and drink was pretty cheap. We hiked to the top of the Castle and paid our 5 euros to get access to all. We walked along Golden Lane, which consisted of teeny tiny houses that had actually been occupied by people up until the 50’s. We looked at the shop in the Powder Tower, and all the other shops they somehow managed to squeeze into a castle. We got to go inside St. Vitius Cathedral, which was impressive, and then climbed over 250 stairs of a tiny spiral staircase up to the top. The climbing wouldn’t have been so bad if there had been a separate staircase for those wishing to go down, however there wasn’t and we had to squish by hundreds of people to get up and the same going back down. I’m sure that was some sort of fire hazard. It would have really sucked had either of us been claustrophobic. But is gave us another great view of the city. Then we went into the Palace and by that time we were starving.
We ate at a Czech restaurant that Chris, Nicole, Ruey, Mara, Nick and Cari had eaten at last time. It was tasty and enjoyable until a whole tour of older Italians decided to join us on our cute garden terrace at the back of the restaurant. Oh well. Damn tourists!
The rest of our trip was spent again wandering the streets and spending money. I ended up buying myself a beautiful set of wine glasses as well – I have no idea how I am going to get all of this stuff home though! That will be quite the trick.
Sorry for the long blog – it was a nice relaxing trip and a change of pace from the 3 countries in 3 days of the previous weekend. PS. I am now at 24.5 countries (the 0.5 is the Hong Kong airport – those are my family rules).