Rachel and Katie Do Europe 2008: Our 1st Full Day in Prague

This morning Katie and I woke up seriously excited that our back were not aching. My back has constantly hurt since the minute I got on my flight to Milan about 6 weeks ago and Katie’s back has hurt since she got on her flight to Milan about 3 weeks ago. And I’m pretty sure we can chalk the back pain up to my dad for purchasing us the most amazing beds on the planet, so amazing that now it is nearly impossible to get a good nights rest on anything other than a little slice of heaven. Groggily yet smiling, Katers and I made our way over to our kitchen (had to throw that in there because our hostel room is a big as my loft downtown!!) and ate the food we bought at the store yesterday. Not eating Greek yogurt and honey or a crossiant for breakfast is surely giving my digestive track some problems. After some cereal and fruit we walked our ever shrinking fannies down the main strip of Nove Mesto, through some of the most adorable streets heading into Old Town and stopped in Old Town Sqaure where we met the tour guide for our “free” walking tour of the right (meaning not the left) side of town.

Let me take a moment here to note that Katie and I packed clothes for places like Sicily, Sardinia, Cinque Terre, Greece, Tuscany and Venice- places that are really ridiculously hot and often times with somewhere around 40-50% humidity, so when the pilot announced that it was 45 degrees when we arrived in Prague with only one pair of jeans and tank tops we knew we were going to spend a few days with goose bumps. This morning especially, but the entire day as a whole, cannot be explained any other way as fucking freezing. I honestly cannot believe that we actually left our room and walked for over 4 hours in the mix between freezing temperature, wind and oh yeah, RAIN!

Back to the point, now, I am not necessarily the biggest fan or advocate for tours, but since this one was free and we know/knew nothing about Czech history and since I am a total lame ass and forgot my Rick Steves book on Prague, we decided to give it a shot. We started in Old Town Square where we saw the Astronomical Clock, romantic Ungelt, Municipal House and Irish Potatoes. We then made our way through some more adorable streets (Katie took about a thousand pictures), which reminded me so much of Salzburg, Austria that I could hardly get a smile off my face (I loved Austria). We went into a church where they actually have the hand/skeleton of a thief hanging from the ceiling to remind people not to steal. Then we walked over and saw Amadeus and Don Giovanni. Don Giovanni is a beautiful pastel green building with huge pillars where Mozart wrote an opera. We walked over to Charles University and through New Town, over Wenceslas Square and saw the National Museum, which was beautiful. Just as our tour was headed over to Franciscan Garden and to the Jewish Ghetto and Kafka, Katie and I spotted a bookstore (we ran out of books to read in Milan and tried to go to the American bookstore near the Duomo but did not know that they would not be open so we were left with only the books that we had just started and would soon be finishing! Seeing a bookstore was a gift from God). We decided to separate ourselves from the tour and get some shelter from the windy/rain/freezing cold in the bookstore. We bought a new book and headed back to our hostel to nap/read/warm up/eat lunch.

Around 5:00 we forced ourselves to layer up and make it over to Josefov, or what used to be the Jewish Ghetto (well I forced myself and probably Katers too). Long story short, we got a little confused and ended up going in huge circle around Old Town, Kafka and Stare Mesto and it took us about an hour to find what should have only taken us about 10 minutes. Josefov was very cute. There are synagogues lining the streets and beautiful neighborhoods. We really enjoyed walking around and snapping pictures here. Unfortunately, we were so miserably cold that we didn’t spend too much time in this neighborhood. We walked back towards the metro stop where we found a nice little English pub to eat dinner at. Like I said earlier, we are little homesick so since we have options here in Czech we are taking full advantage of them and once we are back in Italy it will be back to authentic food. After eating dinner (yes, hamburger for me and bean and cheese burrito for Katie) we walked to our metro (where we saw someone with Starbucks!!!) and headed to our beds for some reading and beauty rest, but not before trying a little Czech cuisine…strudl. Amazing!!