Prague

Last weekend was awesome! I love Prague! I definitely want to go back for a longer period of time to see and experience more of the city. I've decided the best way to travel is overnight trains. It was great! We pretty much missed the train ride by sleeping. We met a girl from Canada, Leah. She was staying at our hostel and saved us from going on a very crappy tour. Our hostel was really nice. I can understand why it was rated so good through out Europe. Instead of the tour, we walked around the city on our own. We accidentally found the Senate of Prague. The gardens around it were very pretty. We went to the Prague Castle, which seemed more like a medieval palace to me. Drew and I went on the tour and also got to see a medieval prison and torture chamber. The castle was gorgeous inside, with a very different style than the one near Munich. There was an alley way behind it full of shops, and above the shops was a hallway full of suits of armor, weapons, and clothes from the time period. At the end of the hall they had set up a cross bow shooting range. Drew and I both shot cross bows!! It was a lot of fun! The we saw the legendary Charles Bridge. It was under construction and covered with vendors and tourists. I think I liked it better farther away. On the way there we saw a dog almost get in a fight with a swan. That was pretty entertaining. We headed back to our hostel to rest up for the upcoming night festivities. We went on Prague's Underground Pub Crawl. It was so much fun! It was a really good deal I thought. You got 10% of dinner at Bohemia Beagles, an hour of unlimited beer and wine, a free shot at three bars, entrance to a club, and a t-shirt. Bohemia Beagles had such good food, and really cheap. That was something really nice about Prague; the price. Everything was very affordable. I had a lot of fun on the Pub Crawl, and I finally got my dancing in! The next day we walked around the Jewish Quarter. Nothing was open because it was Saturday. Poor planning on our part, but we could still see a little of it. Drew, Evan, and I went to the National Museum, where Mission Impossible was filmed. It was a very good museum, and the building itself was beautiful. On our way back to the train station we met a nice guy from New York who had moved to Prague a couple of years ago. He was very friendly, telling us all about Prague and other cities in Europe. Everyone in Prague was very nice and helpful. A lot of people spoke English too, which I was not expecting. It was amazing how beautiful the city was, being untouched almost by so many of the devastating events in Europe. It was hard for me to imagine that less than 20 years ago it was part of the USSR. I hope to go back some day and spend more time there to really get the feel of the city. Each weekend trip I take makes me realize how much I want to come back to spend more time in each city to really experience the culture. Hopefully that will happen soon.