"I'm impressin him with my Praha hat"

Inside the Prague Castle

Prague (Praha), Czech Republic 
Paige and I arrived in Prague, Czech Republic around 8:30 p.m. There shouldn't be many creepers or drunks out at 8:30, right?... it's early... not even bedtime for the middle schoolers. Wrong. We walked out of the train station after getting a map, a bus ticket, and directions to our hotel and that was just about the only kind of people out. We started in the wrong direction but quickly caught it when we stepped inside a hotel to ask if we were headed in the right direction. The people got fewer as we got closer to our hotel which was good because there were less creepers but bad in the sense that it was scarier when you came across one. The woman who had sold us our map had highlighted two different streets on that map and my google map... soooo not knowing which to follow, we again headed in the wrong direction. We fixed it though and made it to our hotel around 9:30ish. Which is early in the world of a college student but we were completely content locking ourselves in our room for the rest of the night.

View of the city from the castle

Prague the next morning looked a whole lot better! Thank goodness. We knew some things we wanted to see but hadn't done a whole lot of research on where to go in Prague so it was awesome when we found one of Rick Steve's books for Prague in the lobby and were able to check it out for the day. First we went to visit the Prague Castle... and took the scenic route to get there. The castle was impressive. It had multiple time periods wrapped up in it and had everything from a Cathedral to Royal Quarters to dungeons to a museum just about castle life through the ages. It was also high on a hill so it gave us a stunning view of the city. We spent all morning there and ate lunch at one of it's multiple restaurants. The castle also had a toy museum that we wanted to see but after discovering it cost more and remembering all the other things in Prague we wanted to see we left for the Jewish Courter.

Jewish Cemetery

I was a bit skeptical of buying our tickets in the Jewish Courter. They were kinda expensive and I wasn't sure how interesting a bunch of synagogues would be. It turned out to be pretty cool. The cemetery was overflowing with tombstones and small building on the side had the names of Jews killed in the holocaust covering it's walls. Staggering. The synagogues were filled with artifacts of the Jewish culture which are rare due to the holocaust. We actually read in one synagogue that the reason these are still standing is because Hitler was planing on using them as a museum for the extinct race!

Astronomical clock

Next we walked to the Old Town Square where we got some yummy apple pastries and saw the astronomical clock. From there we walked to Charles Bridge where there were street musicians and artists. Paige and I both have decided that one of our favorite parts of Europe is the street musicians and we always try to through a euro in there can. They just bring so much ambiance to our traveling experience. The sun was also setting while we there... unintentionally good timing yet not unappreciated. We took a short bus ride down to the Dancing House (a modern funny shaped building by the river). We then stumbled across a cute little coffee shop run by the most adorable old couple. They spoke little English but were so welcoming and kind. It was early in the evening but we were exhausted and decided to eat a cheap dinner by doing a bit of grocery shopping near our hotel and then going to bed early since we had a 5 am train the next day. Paige and I had a fun night joking around and had already created multiple inside jokes before falling asleep. One of which including how awesome her Prague hat was that she'd bought that day and how it would impress multiple men in the future.

While Prague started out a bit rough it was really good overall. It's a unique city that was simply fun to walk through.

Sunset from Charles Bridge