The train ride ended up being quite pleasant. I slept for the first couple of hours while mom read her infamous travel books. Then after I woke up, to my surprise it was pretty scenic. Our train passed through several little German Willages (villages, but the Germans pronounce their v's like a w). And there was a river than ran along the villages as well.
Once we arrived in Prague, that is a whole other fun story at the train station! This is the first time we were dealing in a different currency that we weren't really familiar with. All places except London took the Euro and in London it was the Pound. Here in the Czech Republic their currency was called the Koruna. In order to get to our hotel we needed to take both a subway and a tram. Thankfully the subway connected at the train station but alas we needed to buy a ticket and the machine only accepted coins. Mom pulls out about 2000 Koruna which equated to about $108 US. Well guess what happens, they spit a 2000 paper note out from the ATM machine! We needed coins people. I then try and break the large note and buy a sprite and a twix and the lady at the register wouldn't accept the bill. She told me it wasn't her problem that I had the big bill. She was a bitch so I walked out of there and left everything on the counter. I really wanted that twix too, dammit! Finally we get that whole situation sorted out. I won't bore you with the nitty gritty details. Make it on the subway just fine, and on the tram just fine. We get off at the specified stop and then don't know where to go. The directions weren't corresponding with what was actually in front of us. At one point we just pick a rode and a direction, and by the Grace of God, we end up on the street we need to be. First thing we hear as we walk up to the reception desk to check in "we have a problem with your reservation." Aww shit, now what?! Well somehow they over booked the hotel we were supposed to stay at so they push us over to one of their sister hotels in another part of the town. Our new hotel was now, Hotel Roma. Sounds authentic, right? It still wasn't far from The Old Town and it was near the castle. We agreed and got shuttled over to the new place. After we got situated we take off to walk around and explore. Only had 2 days in Prague and we needed to see the sights. We first head to the Charles Bridge which is a pedestrian only bridge and there are lots of vendors selling various things they've made as well as artists drawing portraits of people.
Next thing we just wander around and get lost in the old town. This is when we did a little souvenir shopping and I bought some postcards. Mom popped her head into a few jewelery shops to gaze at some garnet earrings that she was trying to find to match a ring she has. At 7:30 we were headed to make our way over to a meeting point for a brewery pub tour that we had read about. It was around 30 US per person and included dinner and drinks at 5 different pubs. We race to the meeting point and as we stroll up from a distance we can see who's crowded around the tour guide. About 5 older gents with bellies. After a quick huddle, mom and I decided to blow that off!
The meeting point was in a cool part of town though called Wenceslas Square and it kinda reminded me of a mini Champs Elysees in Paris.
Now to the portion of the blog you know I wouldn't miss...FOOD. We had only had the sandwiches earlier on the train so it was feeding time. We opted for some traditional Czech food this evening. The waitstaff was very friendly and even better is that they had pictures of each of the dishes that you were ordering. I got some type of pork dish with mashed potatoes and spinach in them, and I honestly can't remember what mom got. We both started off with a soup, I got a chicken noodle-y soup and mom got a potato soup. It was dark when we finished and we headed on the walk back to our hotel.
On our walk we discovered the castle that was lit up on the hill. It really was gorgeous and the pictures don't do it much justice.
After taking about 100 pics of the castle, trying to get the lighting just right, we settle for what we have on the camera and take it on back to the Roma. We ask the front desk guy where we could grab some ice cream and he points us in the direction of the Charles Bridge. It was rather late so finding something still open would have been a miracle. Of course we don't find an ice cream joint so we just go into a restaurant and get some dessert. Lucky for me they had ice cream and I got one scoop of vanilla and 1 scoop of strawberry. Mom got a panna cotta.
Day 2 in Prague we decide to go check out the castle and that was just a mess in and of itself. We kept looking for the damn castle and come to find out we were actually already inside the walls of it! We were thinking more of an old school stone palace is what we were looking for but it was more of what I would call a palace. Okay so we decide not to go into this so called "castle" and venture over to the Jewish quarter instead. But not before checking out the HUGE Saint Vitus Cathedral that was located inside the walls of the castle. Apparently my grandma used to have a saying about "don't go all crazy and do the St. Vitus dance." I need to look into that saying and figure out what that means!
So onward to the Jewish district. We were told they had a really awesome cemetary (if cemetaries can be awesome?) so we wanted to see for ourselves. I don't know what it is about walking around cemetaries but I think it's pretty cool. I really enjoyed walking around the Pere Lachaise in Paris. All the gravestones at the one here in Prague were of course in Hebrew. And ever so often you would see little pieces of paper or pebbles on top of the tombstone. People apparently write down wishes and put them there. We were also told there were some 12,000 people buried in the cemetary and in like 15 layers deep! Here are a few pics.
Oh and I forgot to add a pic of the view of the city from up near the castle!
After the Jewish quarter we decided to venture over to the Astronomical clock. Mom had read that at the top of the hour things pop out of it and dance around, etc. We were about 30 minutes from the time this was supposed to go down so we grabbed a table at a nearby cafe and got a warm drink to waste sometime, and I filled out a few postcards. Once the clock hit the hour we saw the clock do it's thing and it was pretty neat. This little skeleton rang a bell and I thought that was pretty neat. I tried to video it from my camera at first, but then I couldn't really see it very good so I tossed out that idea.
And here is the town hall building (I believe), which is what is so neat about Prague because all the buildings are so old and have a gothic feel to them!
It was pretty late in the afternoon by now so we wanted to grab some dinner and try out this Czech-Mex place that was near our hotel and it also had awesome reviews written about it. I'm never one to shy away from Mexican food so we tried it out. Holy Moly it was delicious! We got some nachos as an appetizer and mom and I both got 2 different kinds of enchiladas. Mine were cheese and hers were chicken I think. I cleaned my plate but mom had a few leftovers! After our full belly we decided to check out this Thai foot massage place we had been eyeing the past few days. It was connected to our hotel and we had a discount card in our room since we were guests at the hotel. Along with the foot massage you also got massaged on your arms, hands, legs, and neck. Wowzers, they should have called this the Thai Torture massage! I really think these ladies were trying to test our pain threshold! Mom and I both agreed that we were more sore coming out of the massage rather than going in, haha! After the painful massage we walked around for a little something sweet to eat and got a couple truffles. Oh and I finally happened upon that kolache I was looking for!
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