Day 8 & 9: Prague, Czech Republic

Day 8 stated with a bus ride to Prague, in the Czech Republic. I wasn't too impressed at first, as there was graffiti everywhere (its everywhere anyways in Europe, but this was more so), and a bit dirty. It just didn't feel like the magical city everyone spoke of. 

The first view of Prague

After dropping off our bags at the hotel, we took tram #22 to the city, the top of the hill where the castle was. Everything looked grimy, and I wasn't too excited. It wasn't until we turned a corner and saw the sparkling water of the river, and beautiful hillside, that I realized how gorgeous the city was.

The first view of the Prague Castle

Jess, our guide, took us on a short orientation walk from the Castle to the town square.

The castle was by far one of the most, if not the most beautiful, buildings I have ever seen. You never would have guessed that it was nestled in the back of this city.


In case you haven't figured it out, you can see the pictures better and bigger if you click on them! So the smaller pictures below, just click on them to see them better :)

Close up of gold grate on a window

From the back of the castle

Close up of the coloring on one of the walls

Close up of the top of the castle

I struggled to take this picture, but it was so worth it!

 You can tell I really loved it!! It was so stunning!! 

This is the view from the Castle hill...amazing!

We then walked to another castle, which looked like Buckingham Palace. I don't think we ever figured out what it was. But it looked cool, had cool statues, and had guards at the entrances, so we took pictures!!


 The Czech military look very snazzy in their light blue uniforms...

Statue with a bird on Charles'
Bridge

After that, we headed town the city, over Charles' Bridge, saw some statues, I bought some earrings, and we split up for dinner.

Lucy, Shari, Sue, and I think Helen and I headed towards the tram stop in hopes of finding a restaurant nearby. We ended up finding a place that has apparently been around since the 1400s.

The dinner was AMAZING. For about 15 dollars, I got 3 types of meat, red cabbage, white cabbage, bacon dumplings, potato dumplings, and white homemade bread. Plus a beer. I couldn't finish, there was so much food.

Outside of the restaurant

Our Beer!!!

Our food!!!

My beer!

Day 9 was a free day to explore Prague. So what did we do? We got lost. Twice. (Don't freak out Dad! We got back!)

First, of course, Leanne and I needed some local hot chocolate!

Effin mini Eiffle Tower

We went back up to Prague Castle, then decided we wanted to go see the Petrin tower, aka the mini Eiffel Tower. It seemed easy enough to get to, on our map...

Abandoned Stadium

Stupid mini Eiffel tower. Instead, we trekked for a solid half hour, and found this abandoned soccer stadium instead. It was quite creepy. We were so far gone, we asked a local to help us by pointing to our location on a map. But after looking confused for a moment, she pointed to a space off the paper... illustrating that we had walked so far that we were outside the scope of our map. Luckily we were able to figure out the bus numbers, and hopped on one to take us back to town.

Afterwards, I looked it up- turns out this sport stadium was built between the World Wars, and was abandoned shortly after. It was then used to hold communist rallies and such.

Its also been a venue for concerts, including the Rolling Stones, U2, and Bon Jovi. But the last one was in the early 2000s. Now it just sits empty, gathering graffiti. Some say that they're planning on revamping it, should the Czech Republic ever win an Olympics Bid. But now it just sits, hinting at the once-great past.

 After about 1.5 hours, we finally got back to the square, to eat lunch and watch the Astronomical clock ding.

Here you have the Astronomical clock- probably the first World Clock ever, based on the stars and such. The authorities who commissioned the clock didn't want the inventor to recreate it anywhere else (those controlling, jealous buttfaces) so they blinded the guy :( so this is the only one in existence!

After lunch, we headed to find John Lennon's wall.



But first, we saw the Locks of Love or whatever they're called these days...they're everywhere!

We also ran into a swarm of swan! Leanne said they're quite aggressive...but they were gaggling up a storm on the river bank! One guy was even feeding them! Although they were pecking at him quite a bit....

Finally, we got to John Lennon's Wall! A wall completely covered in graffiti, and its constantly changing, as people are constantly adding to it. We left our own little messages on the wall, of course!!

Thousands of notes and pictures...including ours!

Leaving the Charles Bridge, theres a tradition where if you touch the puppy and the woman on a statue, you will return to Prague. So, of course, I touched it. So many people have, the dog and woman have turned to gold.

Heading back was when we got lost a second time... I don't know how, but we just could not find our bus line. We ended up taking the underground train, the tram (cable cars, basically) and the bus- multiple times! Just to get back to our hotel for dinner. All of this on an expired ticket! It took us about an hour to get back, when it should have taken 10 minutes!

We got back safely, though, with 5 minutes to spare before dinner- just enough time to change, since it had been raining all day. Prague was definitely an adventure, to say the least, and we definitely got out of the touristy areas and main city...I don't know if I would recommend that again. But the city itself is stunning and definitely worth the visit.