Czeching Out Prague

Hello all! Sorry it has taken me a while to post an update, and sorry pictures are still not up from the rest of my spring break. My laptop’s graphics card decided to die and my laptop is currently being repaired, so pictures will be posted as soon as I get it back!

I’ve decided to do this spring break in two separate entries, for the sake of organization, length, and time! This is the first one. Okay, here we go…

After one restful night in Barcelona after my Morocco program, my friends Hillary and Nicole and Nicole’s friend from another program, Carolyn, flew to Prague on Tuesday afternoon. We arrived pretty late in the day, around 5, and then spent an hour or so getting out of the airport, finding the right bus, transferring to a metro, getting momentarily lost, and eventually finding our hostel, The Mosaic House.

This was EASILY the nicest hostel I have stayed in. It was part of a 4-star hotel, so the hostel rooms were basically nice hotel rooms with bunk beds instead of regular beds. The bathroom was super nice and the beds were really comfortable…it was great! There was also a bar downstairs with live bands every night, AND a restaurant. And all for VERY cheap, especially since Carolyn happened to have a discount card that they applied to all three of us (Hillary was staying with friends, so not in the hostel)!

Anyways, we got our stuff settled in, then went out to find a place for dinner. We walked over to the river (everything was walking distance from the hostel, which was also really nice) and found a restaurant that looked promising. And we were certainly not disappointed…we all had HUGE delicious burgers and beers, which were great after a day of traveling.

After dinner, the three of us said goodbye to Hillary, who would spend the rest of the trip with friends in Prague, and went back to the hostel to change. We went out first to a bar called U Sudu. From the street, it looked like an average little bar, one room with a few bar stools and a table. Oh no. It ended up being a series of underground staircases, tunnels, and rooms…there must have been 10 different bars down there! It was CRAZY. We had a few drinks there and met up with some girls from Carolyn’s program, who were also traveling.

Next, we wanted to go find another bar, but instead found ourselves in the craziest club I have ever been in. I forget the name…it’s something very Czech, I’ll look it up later. This club had 5 floors, which all played music from different decades or genres. We had a blast, and ended up getting kicked out when the club closed at 5am! We found our way back to the hostel and passed out.

The next day, we slept in (of course) and then went out to brunch at a famous restaurant, The Globe. Famous expats and authors like Hemingway used to eat there, and there is a bookstore attached to the restaurant. We got a table outside and filled up on some delicious food, then headed out for a day of sightseeing.

We walked across the Charles Bridge (one of the most famous sights in Prague) and saw all of the vendors and musicians along the way. From there, we went to see the John Lennon wall, which is a wall where people paint messages of peace and hope. It is ever-changing, which is pretty cool. We took a lot of pictures of it and in front of it. Nearby, we also came across a lock bridge, like the one in Paris! It was a lot smaller but there were still tons of locks with peoples names and dates carved in (the oldest one we found was from 2007, so they must have to remove them every couple years to make room for more).

After that, we found a café and had drinks and snacks, then walked back across the bridge to see the Old Town. We walked around for a bit and saw the booths and stage set up for the Easter festival and decided to come back the next day for dinner there. Then, we hopped on the metro and headed to the “Baby Tower” on the other side of the city. This is one of the weirdest things I have seen. This tower is some sort of air traffic control or telecommunications tower or something like that, and for an art exhibition a bunch of years ago, an artist sculpted giant, black babies and placed them climbing all over the tower. The Czechs liked it so much that they left the babies there permanently. Real strange, but worth seeing! We sat in the park by the Baby Tower and people-watched for a while, then headed back to the hostel.

We went to dinner at a delicious Thai food restaurant right down the street and filled up on noodles. Still exhausted from the previous night’s adventures, we decided to take it easy and went searching for a bar. We had finished dinner and getting ready pretty late, however, so many of the bars were close to closing. Too tired to brave another club, we just went back to the hostel and went to sleep.

The next morning, we set out for some more sightseeing. We went to brunch at a bagel restaurant. I hadn’t had a bagel in so long, it was FANTASTIC. They don’t have bagels in Barcelona, really. After the bagels, we walked a bit and then went up the funicular (a weird uphill train thing) to Petrin Hill, where there are beautiful gardens, a tower that is a direct rip-off of the Eiffel Tower, and, my favorite, a mirror maze! We walked around for a while, then went back down the hill.

Afterwards, we walked up (up is the truth…it was more of a hike than a walk) to Prague Castle, which was actually more of a cathedral than a castle, but still beautiful. We stopped to sit for a while, then walked back down and across the Charles Bridge again to head to see the old Jewish part of the city. We wanted to see the famous Jewish cemetery, but it was crowded and cost money to go in, so we just peeked through the gates and continued on our way.

We went back to the center of the Old Town to the Easter festival and tried hot wine, a Czech specialty with our dinner. The hot wine was kind of strange at first but actually pretty good (especially once we added sugar!). We ate and then walked around the Easter festival booths for a while, then headed back to the hostel.

We were pretty wiped out, so we relaxed in our room for a while and met our new roommates who had just arrived, three American guys. After a while, we got ready and went down to the bar in our hostel to see the live band of the night (they were pretty good!) and have some drinks and snacks. After a while, we went out to a bar/club called Cross Club, which is an alternative-themed club. It was pretty cool…in one room all the tables, lamps, railings, and everything else was made out of car parts. In other room, the walls were decorated with computer parts. It was not very crowded (apparently Thursday night is not a big going-out night in Prague), but we had a drink and then went to find another club, which ended up being closed. We took a cab home and went to bed.

The next morning, we got up and went to the train station to catch our train to Vienna!
Vienna entry to come tomorrow! I need to go home and do laundry and go grocery shopping, since I am out of both food and clothes. 