I went on this wild adventure with a new great friend of mine Kelley, who also goes to LMU but we only met here in Spain because of that mutual connection! But we clicked right at the beginning and planned this adventure together!
Lets begin allll the way back to last Wednesday (still march!). Kelley and mine first stop was Prague in the Czech Republic! To get there was a hassle and a half and we first had to fly to London, sleep in the airport- yes my 3rd time- and get up for a 6am flight to Prague! We got in at about 9 am, after a sleepless night, ready to conquer! We knew the next couple days were going to be extremely rushed and we would be lacking in the sleep department but could careless and were ready to see the world! Once we got into Prague we were lost and confused trying to find our way around because Czech is such a different language and the tram system fails at having signs at anystop at all. After walking around the cobblestone streets with rolley suitcases for about 20 minutes we found an information desk who informed us our hostel was 5 minutes down the road, of course. We finally made it to our hostel to drop everything off, get some maps and see the city! we stayed at a great hostel and shared a little flat with 8 other people. It had a really nice kitchen and was split into 3 separate rooms so there was plenty of room for everyone. We got a map and some advice from our hostel and hit the ground running. It was lunch time and we were tired from our night of no sleep so we stopped at Starbucks of course and picked up some snacks to go. The city is divided by a river with one side that has the castle and a hilly area where as the other side is the old town with the church and city centre type are. We stayed on the side where the castle was so we headed over the bridge to see old town! The bridge is really long and filled with people and street vendors. It has a great view of each side of the city and made for some great pics! We made our way through the crowds and began wandering the streets. It was so nice and warm outside we didnt even need our coats or boots! So happy! We didnt have much of a plan and were enjoying seeing the old city. Its filled with cobblestones and old buildings. We wanted to see the cathedral and city centre so we mapped our way over and there in the city square was an Easter festival. It was filled with vendors selling foods, easter eggs, beer, all sorts of normal "czech" things and food. The trees were decorated with bright colored ribbons and there was a stage that was holding various performances throughout the week. This city went all out for its festivities it was awesome. We stopped to look at it all and got some good pictures with giant easter eggs and tons of cute little animals. There were so many desserts it smelled heavenly!
From here we kept walking and came across a chocolate musuem aka heaven. Yes this is my 3rd musuem while being in Europe, im basically on the chocolate tour ofthe world. Kelley also loves chocolate so we were in heaven. We got to watch the worker make hazelnut cream filled delights and got a free sample at the end :) from here we walked back out the city square admiring the Cathedral and large tower at the center. After this we headed back over the bridge to go get a look at the castle. Of course it was a straight walk up a huge flight of stairs but the view was worth the exercise. We got there right as the sun was starting to go down a little and it shimmered over the other side of the bridge and river. Up top of this hill is the whole fortress of the palace and it had a huge Cathedral as well. We walked around, took pictures and also had some more great views of the city from different places up on the hill. They had a few cute little streets with an "old-time" in fluence we got to see. The cathedral was huugeee and they were doing restorations to clean it- it was black with all the exhaust from the boats that have gone on the river. Its very gothic inspired and has a creepy look to it. They also had an old tower that was closed when we got there butif you looked in it was filled with torture devices-eek. By this time we were STARVING wed walked clear across the city basically twice and it was time for a big meal- which is totally afforable since their not on the euro! On our map I'd seen a vegetarian restuarant (!!!!) And since Kelley is lactose intolerant was willingto try some vegan food :) it was a beautiful restuarant decorated in bright colors, cool lighting and funky furniture! I ordered a rice dish with tempeh and kel got a salad with goat cheese and other delights. As soon as our food came it was silence until we finished inhaling about 5 minutes later- so delish! Once we got food in our tummys we were pooped and headed back to our hostel. We didnt care how early it was but we were exhausted from not sleeping the night before. When we got back we met our roommates, students from the US studying in Rome and a british guy traveling around. Ive been so lucky to meet such nice people in all the hostels Ive stayed at. We were out within an hour of getting back and slept like little babies.
The next morning we woke up, got ready and was ready to finish our exploration of Prague! After a necessary starbucks of course. Prague has their own little eiffel tower up on a hill parallel to the palace so we deicded wed start off our morning with a hike up there. An other straight up adventure-this time through the woods. We got up top, saw the random little tower, got in our good pics and kept moving. That afternoon we were going to take a bus to Budapest so we were crunched for time! Pragues tower has this little performance on the clock tower every day @ 12 and everyone goes, stops what their doing and watches so obviously we knew we had to go! We knew it was nothing special but needed to be seen! The square was packed as we all watched a maybe 20 second clock have little robotic priests peep their heads out as they went by. So random but kind of funny. From there it was lunch time and where did we go? Thats right, right back to the veggie restuarant. On the way we passed some markets where we got some delicious apples and admired all their goodies. Markets in Europe are awesome Ive come to love them and everything you can see inside them- minus the meat. We pranced over to have a delicious lunch and ordered the special- pumpkin soup and a rice dish with tofu and mushrooms- heavenly and all that only cost us 4 euro- amazing! After this we headed back over the bridge to see two last random sites before we left. The first were these statues- giant black statues- of babies with their faces smushed in. Sounds really weird I know but their meant to symbolize the affect on communism on the people of Czech they were really interesting. Then after we headed to John Lennon wall- a huge wall covered in graffiti with bright colors and fun designs. Of course we signed our names-bottom right corner if anyone reading this goes to Prague! Now it was time to go so we got our luggage hopped on the tram and metro and booked it out to the bus station.
Well we get there and wed tried to buy our tickets online but the website didnt allow you so we figured wed be ok just showing up. Wrong. We go up to the counter and the man rudely tells us its sold out and basically we were sore outta luck- we had a minor freakout before realizing there were other companies-duh. So we go up to the counter only to discover the next bus doesnt leave until 1030pm aka overnight bus. Mind you its only 3pm right now. But it was our only option and there was nada we could do. We checked our bags into luggage storage and got out our map to assess what we could possibly do on the clear other side of town for 7 hours. We just started aimlessly walking pretty much before finding a large inside mall- always promising. Kelley needed some flats so we were on the hunt for her. after a couple hours of aimless wandering we were exhausted and plopped down outside of a starbucks- and didnt move for about an other 2 hours. Not kidding you we were so tired from our two days of conquering we were happy to sit and not move. Eventually it was getting close for time for us to head back so we got all the strength we could and moved on out only to discovered it was pouring rain outside- with thunder and lightning.
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