beautiful city of Praha

I arrived in Praha after dark, and the train station had me a little nervous... the czech language is unlike any I had seen yet... but I managed to find my bearings and walked to the hostel, it didn't look far on the map, however the map was not a topographic map, and I found myself climbing and climbing up to the hostel... not usually a bad thing, but I was carrying my 40lb backpack... At first the hostel left a little to be desired, the reception area was in the bar in the lower level, dimly lit, and then my room had paper taped to the windows so nobody could look in, and one of the beds was broken... I headed out to have a quick bite to eat, and then when I got back I had a beer while reading my guide to plan out my next day. Then, this group at the table next got up and invited me to go bowling with them - and wouldn't you know it, but this one girl was actually in my room that morning in Vienna!! We had a good laugh, and then headed out - yes, we went bowling! I didn't do too badly, but I did lose an earring... strange:) When we got back to the hostel, the night took an interesting turn when the Absenthe came out... we'll leave it at that...haha! Good times! The next day, the three of us (bowling buddies, and roommates - JB from seattle, and Mer from NewZealand via London) headed up to the castle, after visiting the TV Tower, which was decorated with - get this - crawling babies. Oh yes, some modern artist was asked to do something to the tower so he put huge crawling babies going up and down the tower... a sight to behold really. We met this really cool older man, had to be in his seventies at least, who helped us find the metro station, he had just returned from Moscow - he spoke ten languages, taught in seven of them, and gave us this brief history lesson of the area we were in... it was such a cool experience, we talked about him all day!

The Prague castle was huge, and the cathedral was beautiful. It wasn't the best weather, and by the time we got there it was a little late, so we explored and then made our way down to the Bridge (ok, so there were many bridges, but I think this one was called the Charles Bridge?) it has statues all up and down both sides, and buskers and artists selling their pieces... I made a point to touch every statue (that was for you Mike!) and while our photos did not capture it, it really was a beautiful night on the river. We slowly made our way through the town square area (lots of shops, etc) and had a list of places to come back to the next day during the daylight for photos! Prague was really a beautiful city - apparently the only one not bombed during the war, so all original! That night we went out for a traditional Czech dinner, about five of us, and it was sooo good! Salad, and some breaded pork and some potatoes...

found myself climbing and climbing up to the hostel.

The next day, we headed back to the castle, climbed to the top of the cathedral spire (of course!) and got some great shots! It was a beautiful day with sunshine! This city was so wonderful, it was ok that we repeated our steps from the previous day! There was just so much to see! We did make the mistake of stopping at this one restaurant for lunch - it took well over an hour to get our food, we were not impressed! It was an ordeal...

Mer had her flight to catch back to London, JB was catching an overnight to Munich, and I was catching an overnight train to Frankfurt with Tom 'n Ange from the night before, so we headed back... just in time for happy  hour (and here it was literally one happy hour - from 7-8pm, every day...) We said our goodbyes, and then had to rush to the train station, and literally had to run through the station (had to leave JB at the ticket counter, turns out he missed his train and had to spend a couple more days in prague!! so sorry!) and we ran all the way to our platform and onto our train - with all our luggage!! We were exhausted!

When the ticket guy (we'll call him ponytail guy since he had this terribly long ponytail, and he was not a nice fellow...) came around, turns out Tom & Ange didn't have the correct tickets - receipt for two but only one printed off... and he threatened to call the police if they didn't get off at the next stop - which would be somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the Czech Republic in the pitch dark! We begged and pleaded for him to at least let them get into Germany... luckily we ended up meeting these other guys from Amsterdam who spoke to ponytail guy for us, and everything turned out ok... after a few beers in thanks, we finally went to sleep... and I awoke in Germany!

Now to make my way to Dusseldorf to meet my friend Frank! :)