Okay, so now we start our detailed recaps of each city. At the end of all of this, I plan to put together a travel guide that will give you specific info on where we stayed, names of restaurants, must sees in each, etc. So if you are interested in those details, stay tuned.
Because these posts tend to get a little long and may include lots of "you just had to be there" moments, feel free to just read the summary and look at the pictures. But know you are missing some of my witty commentary and funny stories. :)
Summary of Prague: Castle. Charles Bridge. Great food. Churches. Beautiful Garden. Coronation Mass. Needle Alley.
Day 1: May 2
Most of the first day was spent on an airplane between College Station and Prague. Which is a long way, I might inform you. But by the time we arrived, Cousin Swiss Mister had kindly located a bar and restaurant close to our apartment. Ended up being one of the two best meals I had on the entire trip! I had a traditional Czech dish called chakhokhbili, which is sort of like a really thick, really spicy, hearty chicken and veggie stew. Thumbs up. Cousin Swiss Mister had pork knee (this must be a man thing to rip meat off a bone because I saw lots of these being served at various restaurants, always to a guy), and Miss Canada had beef stroganoff, which included dill pickles in the mix. We all gave the food two thumbs up. Then we had some sort of sponge cake with ice cream, whipped cream and chocolate for dessert. You will learn I do not believe in skipping dessert on vacation.
Day 2: May 3
Later that day we made Cousin Swiss Mister get out of bed and join us on a little walk through the Prague Castle. The castle was built in the 9th century for Bohemian kings, and over the years has also housed Czech presidents. It is the largest ancient castle in the world. It is huge and was really beautiful. I loved the church, St. Vitus, inside the Castle as well as the gardens surrounding it. Plus the views of the city were awesome.
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| The Prague Castle |
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| St. Vitus Cathedral (located inside the castle) |
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| Nave at St. Vitus |
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| View of the city |
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| Ignore my 4 layers of clothing. |
After the Castle, I drug Cousin Sean along with me to see a couple more churches on my list, including the Church of the Virgin Mary of Loretto, which was really beautiful and had a great collection of stories and paintings of various saints, but did not allow photos inside.
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| Church of the Virgin Mary of Loretto |
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| Strolling around Prague |
On our way back, I discovered my favorite thing about Prague. Trdelniks. Goodness in the form of hot dough covered in sugar and crushed almonds and roasted over hot coals. Yes, please!
That evening we set out to meet up with a former colleague of mine, a lawyer from Santa Fe, who happened to be in Prague at the same time we were! We ended up having a few drinks and dinner with her and comparing notes about our travel plans. After that, we also took a little walk back to the bridge to snap a few photos of Prauge at night.
Day 3: May 4
Since we had pretty much seen everything on the Castle side of the Danube the day before, we set out for Old Town to check out the square. Every city in Europe has a great town square that always has a big ol' church and lots of colorful buildings. Prague was no exception.
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| Me and Cousin Sean on the Charles Bridge |
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| The Square |
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| Tyn Church |
We also took a little stroll over to St. Wenceslas Square, where we found a lovely gelato stand.
Then we caught the changing of the time at the astronomical clock. People gather all around where little wooden people pop out of the clock and buglers play a song every hour on the hour. It was pretty cool.
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| Group photo at the changing of the time. |
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| See the bugle in the window? |
The rest of the night was spent wandering around, eating, drinking and hiding from the rain.
Day 4: May 5
For a day that started out with so much promise, it ended up getting, well, interesting.
Miss Canada and I continued our vacation plan of getting up at the crack of dawn and headed to the Jewish Quarter to check out the sights.
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| Synagogue |
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| Old Jewish Cemetery |
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| Star of David on the wall. |
On our way back, we stumbled upon a garden called Saidy. It used to be the papal gardens back i n the 1200's or something. It is open to the public and absolutely beautiful. I feel like that's what the book The Secret Garden was written about.
While we were there we stumbled upon a peacock and got some great photos. Even though I am not a fan of birds at all (traumatic experience of watching Alfred Hitchcock The Birds in 4th grade...who shows that to kids?!), I don't mind peacocks because they remind me of Cradle Friend's grandparents' house.
Because it was Sunday I wanted to go to Mass, so I just found a church that had an English Mass and set out. Turns out, it was the Shrine of the Infant of Prague (this relic is from the 16th century and may have belonged to St. Therese of Avila and is said to be miraculous, especially for expectant mothers), and it was the Coronation of the Infant of Prague, which is basically like a feast day. Translation: It was a big deal. People from all over the world make pilgrimages to Prague for this day. They were dressed up, had brought their own statues of the Infant to be blessed, there were priests presiding from like 5 different countries, it was amazing. I met the sweetest lady from the Philippines who sat next to me and was just so excited to be there she almost cried several times and was so excited to meet an American that she took my picture like 6 times.
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| Shrine of the Infant Jesus of Prague |
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| The alter. |
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| The Infant Jesus of Prague |
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| The priests celebrating Mass. |
At the end of the Mass, they handed out flowers and let everyone place the flowers at the alter where the Infant statue stands.
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| My flower. Osu orange, no less. |
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| My flower on the alter. |
This is a perfect example of why I love exploring with no plan. Some of my favorite parts of trips are things that I accidentally stumble upon and had no idea about. The whole morning fell into that category.
Then things turned south in the afternoon. For some stupid reason that I do not for the life of me understand now, we decided that rather than hiring a taxi that probably would have cost like 15 bucks a piece, we would walk to the train station, which was all the way across town, while carrying our backpacks full of crap necessary for two weeks in Europe. FAIL. You talk about getting two girls in a bad mood! The only part that made me somewhat happy was when we stopped for lunch and stumbled upon a restaurant with a grill and a kid who made amazing grilled chicken and veggies. The rest of the time, I was not happy carrying this 40 pound bag across the freaking city.
When we were almost to the train station, Cousin Swiss Mister took a "short cut" through this park. And there began what we now refer to as "The Needle Alley Incident." We turn the corner, Cousin Swiss Mister in front, then Miss Canada, then me. And I see a guy laying up agianst a bench with a needle in his arm. I quickly look away, only to see another guy with a needle in his leg and a lady reaching into her bra to get cash out to buy drugs from him. Shoooooooot. By this point Cousin Swiss Mister is freaking out and trying to balance his attempt to act all alpha male, protective and his desire to high tail it out of there and leave us in his dust. He kept saying, "Don't make eye contact, keep walking, keep walking." Well no kidding we're gonna keep walking. Needless to say, I have no photos of this little incident. My words don't really do it justice, but let's just say I do not think any of us will ever forget it!
So we finally get into the train station and decided stiff drinks were in order. I am not a tequila drinker, hate the stuff, but in honor of my Mexican heritage, I went with a Tequila Sunrise for Cinco de Mayo.
And then we waited at the airport for the next 5 hours until our overnight train arrived at midnight. A bit of advice....do not trek though town with your bags. Get a cab. And do not get to the train station 5 hours early. And avoid Needle Alley. Okay, good, now that we have that covered...
It wasn't all bad though, we met a really nice mother and daughter from Australia (and proceeded to warn them which park NOT to walk through as they left the station) and a recent college grad from Canada. He was full of stories about Prague and his hostel and how they watched the sun come up every morning. Somehow I think that his seeing the sunrise might not have been going out at 5 am and taking pictures. Ah...to be young and carefree. :)
Stay tuned tomorrow to hear about our first overnight train experience and the recap on Vienna, Austria!
