Prague was cool, you should Czech it out

Oh Prague, where to begin. You had me in shambles after the first 30 minutes of being there. First of all, you need to figure out your currency. This whole 1000 crowns is less than $50 thing is not okay. It’s just confusing, and I’m not okay with it, nor is Alana. You tricked that poor innocent girl into withdrawing FAR more money than she intended to. Definitely not a good first impression. Also, why do you have to speak a Slavic language? I think German is pretty cool, and you might too if you tried it out. Their letters have a lot less random stray marks on them, so foreigners actually have a chance at pronouncing something correctly. Just some thoughts I wanted to share with you.

After finally figuring out how the heck to not withdraw $400, our first night got much better. Alana, Drake and I wandered down the road and came across this Turkish restaurant where we decided to eat dinner. None of us had ever had Turkish before so we just decided to go for it. Let me tell you, Turkish food is amazing. 10/10 would recommend trying it out. Plus they spoke English which made everything so much easier because even though this may come as a shock, we didn’t know any Czech. Also they had Pepsi! I love Pepsi. Pepsi is better than Coke, and I don’t care what any of you say. We then figured out how to get to our Airbnb using the metro. Their metro system was actually one of the greatest things about the city. It was so simplistic and straight-forward, so it was very easy to get around. Our Airbnb was really nice, except for the fact that we had zero hot water the entire time we were there. After sticking my head in the water on Friday night, I decided a shower could wait until the morning because there was no way in heck I was about to put my whole body into that ice cold water. At this point though, I had mistakenly assumed we had just ran out of hot water…I later realized this was not the case. We’ll save that for later though. Everyone else arrived around midnight, and we all decided that since some of us were incredibly tired, we would sleep in until 10!! That was definitely a worthwhile decision looking back on it.

So, the next morning, we wake up around 10:30 (whoops) and get rolling. We took the metro into town to meet up with our other peeps and made it just in time to watch the astronomical clock go off at noon. Prague has the oldest working astronomical clock in the world, and it looked pretty amazing. Unfortunately though, most of it was under construction, so it didn’t make for very pretty pictures. It was still cool though. The clock is located in the Old Town Square, which I thought was beautiful. All the architecture on the buildings was so pretty, and they’re all painted different pastel colors.

The square also has an area with basically a bunch of food trucks in it that was very cool. They had Czech barbecue, which is what we ate for lunch, and it was pretty darn good. Of course along with a good meal, you always have to follow it up with some gelato, so I got some Stracciatella from one of the food trucks. It was definitely super good, but didn’t beat the Stracciatella in Vienna, therefore, Vienna is still number 1 for gelato. After lunch, we visited an art exhibition showcasing pieces from Andy Warhol, Salvador DalÍ, and Alfons Mucha at the Gallery of Art Prague. The three different artists were so drastically different from one another. DalÍ seemed like a very troubled man after looking at all of his works. The way he illustrated humans was very strange to me. It was definitely not traditional art. Alfons Mucha, who was actually from Prague, had a much more realistic style to his paintings. He used lots of muted colors and his works had a common theme of temptation, which was far different from DalÍ’s works. Andy Warhol’s pop art was cool to look at. All of the bright colors and very recognizable pieces of art were very lively and fun. I even got a t-shirt made at the gallery of his iconic Chanel No. 5 piece which serves as my souvenir from the city. When we had finished the gallery, we headed up to Czech out the Prague Castle! We took the somewhat long way across the river and up the hill, but the scenery was worth it. On our way up, we came across this little stand that was selling juices, and they looked delicious, so we all got one! Mine had mango, kiwi and strawberry and it was one of the greatest things I’ve ever tasted. The juices must have been straight from the fresh fruit because they were incredible. Eventually we made our way to the top of the hill, and the view was unreal. You could look out and see the entire city from up above. It was a picturesque moment. Needless to say we didn’t skimp on pictures.

Before our photo shoot took place though, we took a tour of the castle. Sadly, St. Vitus’s Cathedral was closed for the day by the time we got there, but we still got to see it from the outside!

The castle itself was very medieval looking on the inside. It was not ornate like a palace, and most of the rooms were empty, yet it was still quite grand in a way. We didn’t do a guided tour for this one unlike at the Habsburg Palace in Vienna, so it probably would have been more exciting if we had. It cost more money though, and money doesn’t grow on trees so no audio tour it was. After visiting St. George’s Basilica, we headed back down the hill, or so we thought. We spent probably 30 minutes going in the wrong direction, but luckily, since the majority of this time was spent having Juliette take pictures of us with her fancy camera, we didn’t get too far.

Once our photo shoot was over, we headed the correct direction down the hill to the river to have dinner. We found a spot that was literally on the river, on a big boat and had dinner. The view was amazing and so was the food!

That also was one of the best meals I’ve had on the trip. And for what we ate, the bill was so cheap. In the US, my meal would have been at least twice as much as it was. Everything in Prague was surprisingly cheap, and that I very much appreciated. We had initially planned to watch the sunset from the famous iconic bridge in Prague, but sadly, the weather sabotaged us, and the sky was full of clouds. There was a cool little string quartet playing popular music on the bridge though, so we watched them for a little bit. They even played Cotton Eye Joe which I found hilarious! I’m pretty sure no one else in that crowd was familiar with it but they still loved it! After waiting for a while, we finally decided we were not going to be able to see the sunset, and headed in search of a traditional Czech sweet treat that involves cinnamon sugar bread spirals and ice cream. I’m still not really sure what it’s called, all I know is it is super good, and probably equally bad for you, but who cares. It was so worth it, even though I got chocolate all over my brand new white shirt. RIP. Earlier in the evening, everyone had decided we were going to go to the Ice Pub Prague. It’s a bar within this 5-story club in which everything, and I mean everything, is made of ice. It is kept at -7°C, AKA super cold, and even your drink cups are made of ice. In my opinion though, it was not the greatest experience. The bouncers outside the club were kind of terrifying. We had to make a reservation beforehand because they let people in in 30 minute shifts. Your time starts before you even get into the stupid bar though which I think is dumb. Anyways, by the time I got my jacket and gloves and got in there, I looked at the clock on the wall, or rather the timer, and I had 14 minutes and 45 seconds before it was over. This would include standing in line to pick one of only 4 drinks available, and then subsequently drinking this drink. Lovely. I decided to try the vodka sweet because it had kiwi juice in it and who doesn’t love some good kiwi. The joke was on me though because that sucker was more than 50% vodka. That bartender needs to go back to bartending school because I think he was trying to kill me. I’m sure based upon that comment you can tell how I felt about my drink. 14 minutes and 45 seconds later, our time is up and we have to leave, which actually didn’t make me too sad because I was getting cold despite the warm attire they had given us. A few of us had agreed before going that we would go home after the ice bar, and that we did. It was the best decision ever. Sadly though, I knew I had to take a shower when I got back, and I was very nervous the water would be ice cold again. It was. I took the coldest shower I have ever taken in all of my 20 years and 5 months of life. It was so cold that it was actually painful when the water hit my head. It stung. After recovering from my traumatic shower, we all hung out the rest of the night watching funny YouTube videos and swapping life stories. That night was so fun even though we didn’t necessarily do anything but talk to each other and get to know one another better!

Our flight the next evening was at 9:30, so we still had quite a bit of time during the day for fun activities. We got a bit of a later start though after going to the main bus station to store our luggage. It took us forever to be able to buy some people subway passes for the day because the machines at our station near our Airbnb only took coins, but most of us were out of coins. Finally, after being forced to go buy things with some of our bills to get change in return (since no one would make change for us, rude) everyone was able to legally ride the subway. Woot woot! We returned to Old Town Square to have lunch at a cute restaurant on the square, at which time the sky began to look quite ominous. Unfortunately, we were the one table outside that was not under any of the umbrellas, so we cautiously began to eat our food. Not even 2 minutes later, it started raining. It started off as a gentle drizzle, which gave us time to move our food inside. I would have cried real actual tears if it had started pouring and my salami flatbread had been ruined. Luckily, we avoided a catastrophe though, and our meal continued on. We then began to search for things to do inside for the rest of the day, and we found a chocolate museum! Oddly enough I would say the chocolate museum was definitely the highlight of my day. They had unlimited chocolate tasting during the tour with purchase of a ticket. It was basically like being in chocolate heaven. After our tour, we ventured back downstairs into the store where they have legitimately ever single chocolate product you could ever desire to have. In addition to this, they also make their own rock candy. Hailey and I discovered this after wandering over to a glass enclosed area where some guys were pouring ungodly amounts of sugar into a liquid substance. This candy was the stuff dentists have nightmares about. That being said though, it was almost mesmerizing to watch them make it. We stood there throughout the entire process, and trust me, it was a long one. I had no idea how much work goes into one little piece of candy smaller than my fingertip. After lots of heating and folding and smashing and throwing, we realized, there was a method to their madness. These magicians had managed to create a pineapple design inside this candy. I have never been so impressed in my life.

Obviously, I had to buy some, along with three different kinds of dark chocolate. No shame. I don’t regret any of my purchases because all of it was delicious. After the enchanting experience at the chocolate museum, we headed to the airport to have dinner before our flight. At this point, I haven’t had Mexican food in more than two weeks, and this is practically unheard of. I’m from San Antonio, so Mexican food is a staple in my diet, like it or not. Therefore, I am intensely craving Mexican food, so when we got the restaurant and I saw nachos on the menu with jalapeños *gasp*, it took every ounce of self-control I had not to order nachos. Even though I wanted it so badly, there was just something so fundamentally wrong with ordering nachos in Prague. So I abstained, but it wasn’t easy. My mission for the week ahead is to find some Mexican food and hopefully end my craving. We’ll see how that goes.

I finally got home around midnight and was so happy to be back in a household with warm water. It’s the simple things in life that make all the difference. Prague truly surprised me with how much I enjoyed my time there, despite the lack of warm water and their super funky currency. It’s somewhere I definitely would like to visit again at some point. This morning I was thanking my lucky stars that we decided to come back Sunday night instead of Monday night. Having today off was glorious, and I know I would have been dead tired if I had had to get up for class this morning. I was able to sleep in, have a nice lunch, and get some work done. I did learn something new today though. Don’t believe Google translate when it tells you that Eiskaffee is iced coffee. That is incorrect. Eiskaffee is ice cream with coffee. Just a heads up. I wouldn’t want anyone else to make the same disappointing mistake.