We woke up around 9:00am and after a shower and free hostel breakfast of cornflakes and sugar with a glass of orange juice in the kitchen we were out the door by 10:00am to make the most of the day.
We walked back toward St. Charles's bridge with two Brazilian girls who we had met at the hostel and who were running around in the snow. Jokingly, we asked them to give us directions to Prague Castle in Portuguese and surprisingly, we were able to understand more or less everything.
Across St. Charles's Bridge, we climbed our way through the streets, passing beautiful apartment buildings and churches. Climbing the hill of the castle, we were faced by the castle ramparts on our left and a fantastic view of the city on our right. It was very cold but the sun was slowly coming out. In true Santa Barbara fashion, Jon was an idiot as he was wearing his only pair of shoes--a pair of ripped up vans with short cotton socks. His feet were numb.
We walked through the castle gates guarded by two huge, violent statues of trolls and giants. Inside the fortifications, we went to the ticket office and bought the best, all access ticket, a long with the comprehensive audio guide that also acted as a front of the line pass. We received a hefty student discount which made it that much better. Jon and I may skimp on going out to restaurants and shopping, but we always choose to visit as many museums and educational opportunities available. After all, thats what traveling is all about, the multi faceted educational experience.
From 11 to 4 we did an all day trip around the castle and its many sights. The incredible, towering gothic St. Vitus Cathedral was quite a sight with its gargoyles and statues. The audio guide was almost too good as it had in depth descriptions of the 25 or so chapels within the cathedral. I learned a lot about Czech history.
From the cathedral we went back out to the freezing cold trying to find the entrance to the Royal Palace. We ended up doing "the story of Prague Castle" exhibit first, which gave a great history timeline of the historical development of Prague and had lots of old artifacts. We also stopped in the beautiful "Basilica of St. George" with the coffins of the nuns and a green statue of a skeleton symbolizing "envy."
We finally found the entrance to the Old Royal Palace, where I marveled at the ceiling supports that looked like the architect was just playing with his compass. I liked having the audio guide as it told me how the great hall used to be used for indoor jousting contests. The interior rooms of the Royal Palace were impressive with hundreds of Coats of Arms.
Outside, we took a southern route and ended up on Golden Lane, an ancient street that was home to many historical figures and medieval shops. Franz Kafka's original house was there. We explored the cool armory with collections of weapons and suits of armor from thousands of years of history. We then went down the hill, stopping to see the dungeon where so many people had been killed and tortured for ridiculously petty crimes. We also stopped in the National Gallery which had some excellent still lifes.
We tried to take some pictures at a cool lookout point before being surprised by our watch and also why the sun was setting. I guess we were pretty far north as the sun was setting around 4pm. We returned our audio guides and then decided where we wanted to go. It was freezing and snowing so we stopped in a little cafe for some excellent hot chocolate. Thick and rich.
We hadn't had any lunch, so we walked back down the hill toward our hostel for a late lunch/early dinner. Our heaping plates of spaghetti tasted kind of weird with the tangy Czech marinara sauce. Actually pretty bad. We watched the first part of "Pulpfiction" just to hear the "What do you call you a Whopper in Paris? I don't know, I never went to a Burger King," line before finishing our dinner and moving to our new room as our one had been booked before us. This was a fantastic hostel with a great atmosphere and laid back staff. I almost felt like we were abusing them as we had used the internet, cooked dinner and hung out in the common room before checking in. If you're in Prague I highly recommend this "Prague Square" hostel.
We talked to the nightshift, burly British guy who had replaced the Tony-Hawk looking guy from New York. We asked him about the Prague night life and he replied that "that was his speciality." On the map he circled a ton of places. On the wall, I saw the Prague pub crawl for 350 crowns or 12 euros. I am normally very against succumbing to the stereotypical American student Eurotrip that is "coming to another country to be loud, stupid and rowdy," and pub crawls epitomize this negative mentality. However, the price and location were right and we figured that we'd give it a shot. It started at 9:15pm so we decided to take a 45 minute nap until 9:00pm to recharge the batteries. Our new room was very spacious with 5 beds. We had two roommates from France, a girl and a boy.
Downstairs we met an Egyptian guy living in Denmark and two girls from Minnesota who were also going on the pub crawl. We hit it off pretty well and headed downstairs to meet up with the crawl in front of the astrological clock. There were a lot of other Americans on the pubcrawl, including three girls from SDSU, but it was very international with people hailing from Australia to Brazil. We went to our first bar which really set the tone for the night. Everyone was extremely social and we quickly met all 40 or so people on the crawl. The crawl went from 9:15 to 1:15 as the last stop was an underground nightclub that was quite cool. Jon and I left at 3:45 to head back to the hostel and sleep a little before the beginning of another busy day.
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