Prague. It Was Pretty Legendary!

Just got home from 4 nights and 4 days in Prague, Czech Republic. It was amazingly beautiful. The people were nice. The food was soooo good. The weather was pretty good, at least it was warmer than here. We had a really great time. I thought I would give you a brief list of what we did.

Monday: arrived in Prague and took a mini bus to the hotel at about 10.30 pm.

Tuesday: We took the hotel shuttle to the town center at 9.40 am. That put us in the center at about 10 am depending on traffic. We wanted to go to the Prague Castle first. We decided to walk there. It took us about 2 hours. But we found our way and saw abou 3/4 of the city but had no idea yet what anything was. On our way up to the castle we passed through Lesser town. It was so cute with all the old buildings, winding up hill on the cobble stone streets. We ate at a little restaurant that served traditional Czech food. It was sooo good. We spent the next 4 hours exploring the castle. It was huge and there were so many buildings to go into. That evening we had Mexican food, per a recomendation, and it was great too.

Then we decided to head back to the hotel using public transportation. Well they have trams, buses and the metro. It is a little different than our public transportation stuff here. We couldn't find anywhere to buy a ticket. We watched everyone else and they were just getting on. We decided to follow them and just hop on. We saw little ticket punchers on the tram but no one used them. Of course the Transportation Authority had to jump onto our tram to check tickets. And of course we didn't have one. So we had to get off with him at the next stop and pay a 750 Kroun fine. About $40. It sucked. Come to find out all those people had month long passes and you don't have to punch tickets except for the first time you use it. So different from here where you have to punch it every time you get on, and here they are magnetic. When I told him there were no signs saying where to buy a ticket or how much they are, he told me to buy one at the smoke shop! Oh I should have known, buy your transportation ticket at the smoke shop! Of course also at the metro, but we hadn't been on the metro yet to see that. So from then on we made sure to always get a ticket. And we were not stopped again.

Tuesday: We went to the Jewish part of town. I had really wanted to do this. We saw 6 different synagogues that had been turned into museums and a Jewish cemetary. We learned the complete history of Czech Jews beginning around 790AD and the traditions of the Jewish faith. Most of these I already knew but it was intresting reading them from a secular perspective. We had some more amazing Czech food for lunch and walked around the old part of town. We had dinner at the Bohemia Bagel, per recomendation. It was amazing as well. We ended up going there again and bringing bagels home with us. It is like Panera but way better. That night we found this little Italian place that was have live jazz music. We stopped by there and listened for a little while. It was nice.

Wednesday: We took a walk around all day. We explored different parts of the city, the old and the new town, lesser town. We walked along the river. Ate lunch at a pizza place, had tea in the center square in the sunshine. Enjoyed the evening.

Thursday: We explored Wenceles Square. It has a monument dedicated to those who fought against communism from WWII to 1991. There was also a thing set up buy some activist that we walked through. It told there story of about 50 different people. Each poster showed a picture and told the untold story of how that person tried to fight against communism and make a difference in their society. It was really moving for me to read about. There were so many people who tried to stand up for what was right and sacrificed their life because of it. Also at the square is the National History Museum. We got to read about the cultural history of Czech from the 20th century. It was facinating. It also had a bunch of Zoology stuff too. I got to see possibly every animal in the world stuff behind glass, including skeletons of how we came from apes! It was a little outrageous to say the least. The rest of that day we walked around that part of the city and explored.

Friday: We had already seen everything but decided to walk along the river and try to get some more pictures. We had lunch at the Bohemia Bagel and took home a dozen bagels. We flew out that night!

It was such a great trip and not too terribly exhausting. We got to take our time strolling through town each day. The hotel was great too. Here are some pics. Ok its alot. I tried to narrow it down. If you want to see all of them then look on my facebook!

Oh and a few funny videos at the end too!