"I would gladly live out of a suitcase forever if it meant I could travel the world."
I wasn't sure what to expect when we decided to visit The Czech Republic, but I'm so glad we did! Prague is one of the most fascinating cities I've ever been to. It was full of culture, history, and had a great atmosphere. The people were very friendly and the language barrier was nearly nonexistent. Of course people spoke Czech, but they spoke a fair amount of English as well.
Day 1 in Prague:
BUT FIRST: the view from our flight...
When we arrived at the airport we exchanged our euros to crown (Czech currency). We all felt like high rollers when the ATM was spitting out 1000, 500, and 100 crown bills. Unfortunately a 100 crown is only about 5 dollars. lol. It was weird paying 200 crown just for lunch. It took some getting used to. Especially when I went to buy a pair of shoes and they were 1000 crown!
We took the metro from the airport into the center of New Town. There was shopping, food, and historical things to see everywhere. It took us a little while to find our hostel because the address was in Czech, but people on the streets helped us and we eventually found it.
Our hostel was called Equity Point and was really nice! Nothing like the movies depict them. Ours was fairly new and all 6 of us got one big room with bunk beds, our own bathroom, and cubbies to lock our stuff in. We got keys cards for our room, free breakfast every morning, and a receptionist downstairs at all times. It was full of young people traveling in groups and from different places around the world. It was a great experience and I would recommend a hostel to anyone young wanting to travel. (Checking the reviews on trip advisor has helped us find the best ones.)
Prague has Old Town and New Town. Old town is a historical square that is home to the famous Astronomical Clock, Old Town Hall, churches, street vendors, etc. New Town is more modern with lots of shopping, fast food restaurants, and casinos. We walked through both and explored the city. We came upon a maze in New Town made out of hand painted bricks. You could paint your own brick and add it to the maze. I painted an American flag since there were flags from a lot of other different countries. ('Merica!)
After that we went to see the Astronomical Clock. It puts on a performance every hour. There is a little skeleton that dances, music that plays, and a golden rooster that crows at the end (kind of like a cuckoo clock.) Damian told me it was the most overrated tourist attraction in Prague, but that it was so stupid that I HAD to go watch it... and he was right. lol. It only lasted about a minute, but so worth seeing. The clock is beautiful. It was built in 1410 and is one of the oldest astronomical clocks in the world.
A friend my brother studied abroad with/turned family friend, Molly, messaged me and told me she had a friend who lived in Prague and to call him. We ended up getting ahold of him and he invited us to do a pub crawl. It's the thing to do in Prague-- around 8/9:00 every night groups of young people meet at the Astronomical Clock in Old Town and group off in colors and do pub crawls. They also give out matching shirts. We picked the blue group called the blue monkeys. We just called ourselves the blue barracudas all night. haha (We obviously grew up in the 90's) We had a blast! The pubs were in deep basements and looked like something out of Harry Potter. Such a cool experience...
We met so many people that night who were also studying abroad/traveling like us. People from Ohio, Boston, London, Australia, and Bulgaria. Every hour or so our group (about 100 people) would move to a different pub. The directors led us around town and kept everyone together. It was a blast.
Day 2
The next day we walked to Old Town and got local cuisine from street venders and ate in the park. They had big hams, sausages, bread, and a potato/sauerkraut mixture. Ashley, Andrew, Yadi, and Keith got the slabs of hams and Sam and I got the spicy sausage. DELICIOUS! The others didn't know that the price of the ham varied on how big of a slab they cut you. Andrews ended up being like 575 crowns (about 29 dollars) hahahaha. He's still complaining about it. It was the most he spent on dinner the whole trip. So funny.
Next we went to a Salvador Dali exhibition. He's one of my favorite artists of all time. (He's known for the melting clocks in the desert.) Damian would have loved it. Sure wish I had him with me. He is always my tour guide through art museums. He knows everything.
After lunch we went to the clock to check out the free tours. (They really are free! They only work for tips.) We met a really cool guy named Keith. We chose to do the castle tour. It sets upon a big hill and overlooks the city. It's the largest ancient castle in the world and includes the Gothic St Vitus Cathedral, several palaces, gardens, and defense towers. On the way up the hill we stopped at a Monastery. The Monks that live there brew a certain beer you can only get in Prague.
I think we had a little too much fun with the guards outside of the castle, but no luck making them smile. The St Vitus Cathedral inside the castle was built from the early 900's and was finally finished in 1929. One of my favorite things about the cathedral was that some of the sculptures on the cathedral were of men building it wearing togas, and the final sculptures had men in suits finishing it. It shows how long it took to construct it.
After our tour we all got ready and went out for dinner. The restaurants have small blankets on the backs of the chairs incase it gets chilly at night. It's genius! They also have these huge Pretzels on the tables. After dinner we all roamed around the city, checked out the night life, sang songs down the street, and hung out in Old Town.
Day 3 & 4
We took another tour with Keith. We met at the clock at 11am. (If you can't tell everything happens "infont of the clock.") This time we did a tour of Old Town, New Town, and the Jewish Quarters. We saw the Estates Theatre, one of the oldest theaters in the world. Mozart played there!
The Jewish Quarters in Prague were originally preserved because Hitler wanted to keep it to use as a museum of an "extinct" race of people. The Jewish Quarters were basically the slums that Jewish people were forced to live in at the time. We also saw the Old Jewish Cemetery, which holds around 12,000 tombstones and they suspect that over 100,000 Jews were buried there. The cemetery was very small. We were told they were only given that small amount of land to bury people, so they had to stack them 15/20 people deep. It was extremely eye opening and sad.
That evening we went and saw the castle and Charles Bridge lit up at night. It was breathtaking. The Charles bridge was closed off the whole time we were in Prague because of the flooding/high water... It was unfortunate, but as law students we completely understood and were trying to think of all the liability and negligence charges that could be brought if something were to go wrong. lol.
Our last morning in Prague we had breakfast and headed to the airport. When we landed in Lyon and were leaving to catch a cab to the train station, we were stopped by security. We ended up being locked in the airport for about 30 minutes because they found a piece of suspicious luggage in the middle of the airport left unattended. So needless to say-- there were bomb dogs, police officers, and security everywhere for a little while. The luggage was taken out in big black box and we were shorty released. We were running for cabs and through the train station like the Mccallister family in Home Alone... but we took different cabs and arrived at different times, so we lost each other and 3 of us made the train, and 3 were left behind. Ashley, Keith and Andrew ended up catching another train back to Clermont, so it all worked out and we all made it back safe.
Overall, it was a perfect long weekend and I LOVED Prague.
