Praha ... Prague

Our luck has changed, travel days have turned into sunny days and days in cities have turned grey and rainy. Although when we arrived in Prague it was beautiful and sun shiny, so we had to take advantage of the afternoon and the sunshine, as the forecast doesn't look like it will last unfortunately.

On the train from Dresden this morning we listened to an interview that Rick Steves did, we learned a number of things. The ones that stuck out specifically were that Prague is called the golden city of a hundred spires. I have never heard it referred to in this way before but there are definitely a ton of spires that can be seen almost from anywhere, and many churches and building have gold somehow on it. Praha it the Czech way of saying Prague, this was another thing we learned from Rick, even though we did see this name and assumed it just from travelling to Dresden.

In my personal opinion the most amazing thing about Prague is that it wasn't destroyed in the war, because of this they are one of the oust preserved cities in Europe, or say they say. A unique tid bit is that the buildings in Prague, due to the fact that the city wasn't detroyed has buildings that were built from many different times that are side by side. 

Now I have a ton of pictures that I just collages together mainly due to the fact that I can't say much about them. We decided that we would do the walking tour tomorrow, so for tonight they are just picture of the many things that I am in awe about in this city. I also imagine I will be duplicating many over these next few days, so if you catch yourself being familiarized with one it's probably because you seen it before and I was far to excited to notice I already posted it.

When we first arrived and began our journey to the hotel, we came across some kind festival.The cops were blocking off a street at a time and there were tons of motorbikels there were driving down the streets. Eventually it turned into cars as well. You could tell that they were all driven by men and that they were enjoying the attention and the fact that they could show off, due to the fact that they were revving their engines whenever they got the opportunity. Especially because the police would stop them clear a street and let the cars go then they would all go by and then repeat the process, so there was a fair bit of stopping for them. It was super cool to see, also very loud, but a great welcome to Prague. As was the sun. We even came across Costa! If you don't remember this is my new found love of an Italian coffee shop. SO GOOD! 

 

We dropped our bags off at our hotel. Now, when we booked our hotels and hostels, we went through hotels.com. Our selection was based on, price and how close it was to the city centre or main attractions. So for the most part finding our homes have been an adventure because we never really know what we are going to get. In this case we lucked out and are in a schwanky hotel. We certainly won't complain because it clearly met all the criteria. But we even got a four post bed with sheer curtains that goes all around, the perfect bed for length and comfort, and the perfect pillows. All around great. Not to mention it has its own bathroom This includes a sink, toilet, bum cleaner(budae?), shower! We even have a couch. It is crazy!

 

Alrighty, so money. You know that the city has a different currency when there is exchange shops on every corner and sometimes more. The sign for their currency is CZK, Czech Krowns. The exchange rate, 1:26, that is 1 euro to 26 Krowns. UHHHH what? What era did we just jump back to!! When we exchanged 100 euros we got 2,600 Krowns. Haha this is awesome! In such a wear way. Feel like your rich when you hold a 1000 bill in your hand, then you realize it's only 10 dollars, but the 15 seconds you felt like a boss was so worth it! Crazy when you go to places though because everything seems off, for example. My dinner was 228 Krowns. Sooooo 8.50 give or take. My super awesome delicious gluten free beer named Celia was 57, SOO just over 2 euros and it was half a litre of beer. It is such a hard thing to wrap your head around but also pretty cool.

 

Man, I have already fallen in love with Prague and we have been here only an afternoon evening. There are definitely tons of tourists here, but even you can escape to the places that aren't real touristy. When we first set out to explore we found our selves having a drink in a quaint little court yard restaurant. They seem to love this because we went to the first place we saw like this and after walking the streets they have random signs pointing to an alley way saying the court yard restaurant was behind it, and a constant flow of people coming and going from these places.

 

Like I said today is sort of a hodge podge collage of pictures. But I do have things to say. For example I shall now rant about ice, in this causes a none interest skip to the next paragraph for a new topic. :) Ciders, I enjoy COLD ciders. This does not mean that I enjoy them over ICE. Luke has brought to my attention a number of times over the years that ciders are actually meant to be served over ice. Manufacture recommendation, which I happen to disagree with. In this case the glass even say serve over ice. In this case I just drank it. But I am just not a fan of having it watered down. At least in this case because I was given a bottle, which this is also the first time I have had Somersby in a bottle, at least I knew that I was getting the amount of my drink. When it is on tap, the usually given you more ice then cider, you just don't know it because it gets so watered down that you feel it is so full. 

 

The architecture all around is just so amazing to me. I know I repeat myself, but just look! Of course pictures will never do the real thing justice but still, can't help but snap pictures, to try and capture the image that I am drawn to and love. Especially while it is sunny out,I desperately hope the rain doesn't come like the forecast says, but sadly it probably will.

We also came across a few things that we aren't entirely sure when they are happening or what they are. But they shall be googled eventually. A festival that is happening tomorrow in the main old town square, they have a stage and everything set up for it, so we will see what that is about. Also not to far from there they have 4 or 5 half court sport courts set for a 3 on 3 tournament of some kind. And then there was whatever event that we first stumbled onto when we arrived with the cars and bikes.

 

We came across a number of interesting things today, here are a few I shall explain. First off the large head, it is made up of a number of rotating discs or something because it rotates 180 degrees. Pretty cool I must say. We also saw they same things but of two men peeing into a fountain, unfortunately I didn't get a picture of that one. Top right hand corner is a group of 3 young ladies maybe early twenties talking to Rafiki and getting all the knowledge that they could from him, notice he even has a pipe. And yes they were legitimately sitting on the ground talking to this man, and even in English, if there was an easy way to eavesdrop I certainly would have tried. Below that we made our way to the river, and the Charles bridge, and we came across many, many swans, as well as many pigeons, but they are certainly not picture worthy. The bottom left and right corner pictures go together. /they have paddle boats that you can rent and go around the river in, and some look like cars. If you can zoom on the left picture you can see them in action on the river, they look pretty awesome and realistic. The right is a close up at night of the paddle boats. The bottom middle picture is of 2 guys welding the tram line at night.

 

The gentlemen statue holding onto the umbrella is seen near our hotel. We didn't really think anything of this except that it was a unique statue, until later we came across the statue on the right. He is actually hanging onto the pole with his hand, event though I was convinced it was a romp around his neck, which I am glad in the end it isn't. Curious if there are more statues like these around the city, even though these were the only two we seen on our travels today.

 

Today was awesome. In a nut shell, we journeyed from Dresden to Prague, and explored and orientated ourselves to the city. We stopped for a drink along the way when we arrived, and eventually landed ourselves at an Italian dinner restaurant, with and entirely gluten free menu! Before continuing to explore and the evening set on the city.

Dinner, gluten free in it's entirety. A lot of the places that seem to be gluten free in Europe tend to be Italian. Which makes sense due to what I read about Italy before our trip, I feel it will be the best country for gluten free, and has a lot to do with why it is spreading into the rest of Europe. This has mixed emotions for me for when we head into Italy, because we will have had so much of it and maybe it will be disappointing to what Italy itself has to offer. Does that even make sense? Well dinner regardless was delicious. The great thing about these little Italian restaurants is that they are usually either run by Italians, fluent in Italian, English, and the language of the place you are in; or they are family run places. This is great for a tourist as you don't feel alienated by being a tourist. Our waitress was equally as excited as I was that the menu was gluten free. The beer, the absolutely delicious tiramisu we had for dessert. It was awesome! SOO it's safe to say we will probably be returning to this gem of a place at some point over the next 3 days.

That is also great! We have 3 full days and nights still in Prague. We will get to thoroughly explore both sides of the river, see all we can see, and plunk ourselves down at cafes and enjoy the people watching because we will have loads of time here. Although it never seems to be enough time, but that is part of this adventure, we know where we want to come back to and we have got to experience a little bit of everything. It is also great to be in these cities on the weekends. They are so alive and you really get to experience the night life. To us this means literally walking around the city at night, we are old souls and when we stay out late we prefer to remember everything the next day.

Prague is definitely a city made for walking. In fact you hardly see cars to be honest. You catch yourself randomly because you realize you are walking in the middle of the street, then you realize everyone is and there are no cars around. This could be due to the fact that there are a few events around so maybe they just have shut down some of the streets, although it certainly feels fairly permanent. 

I am eager to explore this city, and hopefully see what some of these festivals are. Ron or shine, we will certainly be enjoying Prague.

 

And so the adventure continues...