Thursday the gang woke up… eventually to our first day in Prague. I guess the lack of sleep finally caught up with all of us and the super good blackout curtains in the apartment didn’t help, but we all slept into the afternoon. It was lovely.
When we finally all got up and got around we made our lunch in the apartment before heading out to explore the city. Our first stop was Old Town Square. There we saw Prague’s Astronomical Clock, a very elaborate contraption that can tell you the time of day along with about 30 other things, I’m pretty sure it could even take your temperature. Everywhere we looked we could see the beautiful, classic Czech architecture. I don’t think I could ever get tired of seeing these buildings that are centuries old.
One of the many ancient cathedrales in Prague. The city is full of architecutre just like this.13th century architecture really made me realize just how young the States are and how new all our architecture is compared to everything in Europe.
While we were wandering around the Square we saw St. Nicholas’ Church and found out there was a concert starting in less than an hour. It was really cheap (like everything here) and it was a trio playing some very famous classical pieces, plus it was the only way to get in the church. We bought our tickets and couldn’t have been happier that we did. The group was amazing and the church was beautiful! Classical music is always impressive and these people really had talent. It was really great to hear the music in one of the oldest, most well-known musical cities in the world, the Mozart piece we heard was written right in Prague!
After our concert we wandered across the river to see what we could see. Somehow we wandered into an old garden and found some weird things. Right off the bat we saw an albino peacock, something I’ve only see pictures of. What really made it annoying was that it kept screaming, I hate when peacocks scream, that was the only bad part about staying the night at my grandparents’ when I was little, the neighbors’ screaming peacocks terrified me. The garden also had a really strange artificial dripstone wall. The king at the time (sorry, I don’t remember who exactly) wanted a wall that would be intimidating and terrifying. I think he succeeded a little.
The albino peacock in the gardens. I never would have imagined these birds could be just as beautiful without their colors.
The dripstone wall from the view of Prague Castle.
Eventually though we were pretty hungry and it was starting to sprinkle so we set off in search of somewhere to eat. We remembered how to get to the restaurant Keegan took us to the night before so we got on the Metro and headed there. Like I said, it was sprinkling when we got on the Metro but when we got off it was POURING. We waited in the station for 20 minutes waiting for the rain to let up. It eventually did but we still got all wet because only Jaclyn, Sarah and I had umbrellas. Oops.
We found a great little Czech restaurant in the same neighborhood and had another wonderful meal. It’s so strange going from the pretty light, summery food in Paris to the heavy, stick-to-your-ribs Czech food. It’s wonderful but I don’t think I could eat it for a prolonged period of time. After our dinner we decided to head home because despite the late wake-up we were getting tired. I think we’ll be tired from this trip for the rest of our lives. Andres really wanted to take the trams so we gave it a try. We managed to take one to a good stop but from there we got confused so we hopped on the Metro instead. The Czech is starting to get to us because we really are walking around this city blind. It’ll be a strange feeling getting back to an English-speaking nation. Overall though I’d say Prague is pretty amazing and I’m really looking forward to the next few days!
