Prague

Old town hall & clock tower
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We left Cairo at 3am and we were shattered by the time we arrived at our hostel in Prague, so sleep was the first thing on the agenda. The hostel was a dark and gloomy building with a 70’s communist feel to it. There were wide corridors with flickering lights that never really made it on and huge bathrooms with rugby style showers. The whole place just gave Rose the creeps; we never managed to figure out what the buildings original use was.

We went looking for Breakfast as soon as we awoke. A fresh sandwich was divine, purely for the fact that it wasn’t chicken shawarma, lamb doner or meatballs (our main diet in the Middle East). After filling our stomachs we were ready to discover Prague. We headed into town and wandered along next to the Vltava River down to Charles Bridge. Here thongs of tourists strolled across the bridge stopping to look at stalls and watch musicians and artists. We fought our way through to the other side where we visited the church of St Nicholas a very gaudy Baroque church. In the evening we went to watch a marionette show, which was good but needed a little more plot other than horny marionettes.

Astronomical Clock
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Sunday morning we rose early to see an uncluttered Charles Bridge before all the other tourists awoke. It was pretty much deserted, so we had a close up look at the statues that lined the bridge, some were rather gruesome. After the classic tourist shots we headed up the other side to Prague Castle. It was a mixture of large buildings a church and houses all thrown in together. After seeing the castle sights and the changing of the guard ceremony we went up to the monastery. The summer refectory had stunning frescoes covering the ceiling.

Pastel buildings in the city centre
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Monday we went on a tour through the Municipal house. We felt the sharp increase in admission costs after Egypt’s dirt cheap ones. Other than the theatre it was a collection of nice rooms, not really worth the entrance fee. After lunch we went to explore Vysehrad an old castle site. The information office was closed despite its doors being open and couldn’t give us any helpful information so we just wandered around. The grounds included a fascinating graveyard with a church in the centre. Richly decorated tombs with statues, mosaics and paintings surrounded the edge on the graveyard. We spent a while exploring the graves before having a quick look inside the church. There was a great vantage point on top of the west castle walls of which looked out over the river. Afterwards we managed to make it to Staromestske nam for the Astronomical Clocks hourly show.

Entertainers on Charles Bridge
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We really enjoyed Prague; Rose especially loved all the ornate buildings. It was also wonderful to see green again and even have some rain after 42 days without.