A weekend in Prague

So this post is coming a little late as far as talking about the previous weekend, but like I've said things are a bit of a whirlwind around here so I do the best I can. We decided on Prague a little bit late, and planning to get there and home was quite the effort as we were leaving from Vienna as opposed to Bonn. So after we spent those few hours in the park that I talked about in the previous post and got ourselves to the bus station, we got some gelato and waited for the bus, not really sure what to expect from a random bus ticket in Europe. Suffice to say we were pleasantly surprised when our Regiojet bus showed up and we climbed aboard to find comfy seats with screens built into the backs loaded with movies. A couple of hours later on a very enjoyable bus ride and we were in Prague. Of course it was also about 11 at night due to a slight delay (of course) so we were a little lost to kick things off, and our first experience with the Czech currency didn't help. So from here on out the currency will be referred to as Czechlets because one: it sounded funnier and two: we didn't know the actual name. So we needed to buy a transit pass for the weekend to use the train to get around, and we found a small kiosk which seemed simple enough. Except it didn't take credit cards. Oh well, we thought, we'll just get some Czechlets now. This is when we realized the horrendous worth and conversion rate of Czechlets. 1000 Czechlets for about 42 US dollars. What even is that? So after a good laugh about the fact that the ATM spat out a single 1000 Czechlet bill, we realized the kiosk also only took coins even though the ticket was about 110 Czechlets per person. At this point, we stared at the machine for a minute, gave up, and called an uber. A 10 minute drive with Peter later and we were at the front door of our Airbnb where the rest of the group had arrived earlier. At this point it's after midnight and we are exhausted and simply happy we made it in one piece to our home for the weekend as a rather small group of 5. After some hugging in celebration of our success (it's the little things people) we decided to call it a night, and told the rest of the group that we would not be leaving early with them and would just meet up at about 11:30 for lunch so we could sleep in a little bit. The next morning we were able to converse with a real person about train tickets, and we quickly bought day passes and made our way to the historic city square to meet everyone. (It should be noted when I say 'we' I'm referring to the group of us that came in late: myself, Juliette, Carter, Hailey, and Miguel) When we got there, I was once again blown away by the beauty of the old city square and it's classic European design. It was lively, with street performers dancing and singing, people watching them, children laughing with bubbles, everything you'd expect from a historic town square. After meeting the rest of the group, we watched a slightly disappointing clock chime off for 12, then we decided food was a must. The only good thing about Czechlets being so undervalued in comparison to euros is that things are then relatively cheap. I grabbed a bowl of potatoes, ham, and sauerkraut for around 10 euros (pretty decent considering how much stuff usually costs) and went to town. Unfortunately I can only handle so much sauerkraut before even I give up, so I had to stop about 3/4 of the way through. Post lunch (getting really tired of saying "after x...") we decided to cross the bridge to old town and make the accent up to the old church and palace. Let me tell you, that was some hike and don't let one of the others try to play it cool because we were all dying. We did, however, stop along the way to grab truly fresh fruit smoothies which were a much needed refuel. After the pit stop we made the rest of the trek up to the old town and found ourselves at an excellent overlook of the entire city of Prague. After taking an absurd number of photos (which we do every time we find a pretty spot) we started trying to find what exactly you should do in the old town. We ended up buying tickets to do tours of the castle and the basilica and proceeded to be fairly underwhelmed, but it was still a castle so I suppose I can't complain. After all of our tours we started to make our way back down and stopped to take more pictures along the way at various places including some walls that were precarious to say the least. Sketchy photos completed, we trekked back down to the bottom of the hill, crossed the bridge and found dinner on a boat in the river that was absolutely beautiful and actually relatively cheap. The tapestry that created a roof on the upper deck folded all the way back to reveal the whole sky and a view of the hill and old town as the sun started to set. From there we tried to go watch the sun set on the old bridge, but clouds had rolled in and so it turned into us listening to some music and just hanging out on the bridge. As per usual, we decided we needed to eat something next, and wanted to try a traditional Prague dish where bread is baked with cinnamon and sugar and is essentially like a funnel cake but baked on sugar instead of powdered sugar. We found a place that served it as an ice cream cone with nutella and strawberries and went to town,  and I can say I was completely satisfied with the purchase. It also started to fall apart towards the end into a chocolatey, sticky mess but it was still delicious so no complaints. By this point it was getting later and we made our way back to the Airbnb to change and head back to try out the ice bar we had heard about. After we got all the way back downtown and found the place, we struggled for a minute to get in past bouncers who were way too serious and got our drink tokens. Then we donned some parkas and went into the ice bar, a fairly small place with just some stairs and the bar and lots of ice. The experience was interesting to say the least, and definitely worth it, but I think it was a one time deal. We stayed for our one drink then made our way back to the hotel to get some sleep, and by 12:30 we had called it a night.

Our last day in Prague, we got a delicious brunch to kick off the day before the rain drove us inside and made us consider plans that kept us from having to be outside. We settled on the chocolate museum where we pigged out on chocolate samples and watched a chocolate maker produce some candies (which we of course got to try). After we were done with our chocolate coma we shopped around for the last couple of hours we had, boarded our train back to bonn, and arrived at the host home late at night, ready to start another week.

*as a side note, I will put in the Roman history museum piece in this post since it is the next post I will be making. The piece I found and liked the most was a set of hair clips that were made of beautifully curled glass. While I wasn't able to find much about the hair clips specifically, I did find some about the glass making in general. It turns out much of the coloration was done in the same way we color many of the solutions in lab: by adding components like copper and cobalt. The intense blue I saw in my second favorite one (a little to the left from middle in the photo)was most likely done with cobalt to get the deeper blue. My favorite one (the amber gold color in the middle with the gold on top) was most likely generate using iron sulfur compounds in the glass. While I wasn't able to find much history on the pieces themselves, I really loved the pieces just because of how much they caught my eye. The pieces are unbelievably small yet they have incredible detail, especially the one with the gold topping. The colors are as vibrant as anything I would see today, and the craftsmanship is everything you would expect from the Roman Empire. At any rate, they were among many other beautiful pieces that caught my eye and helped further prove the incredible history of Rome.