Day 68: Touring Prague
Saturday - July 24, 2010:
I am loving this "no stress, no stress" itinerary in Prague. We decided to be ready around 10 and just go from there, so I lazily got ready around 9:20 and headed downstairs early... just because. Downstairs I ran into Emily, Becca, Brittany and Chelsea, and they were all ready to go explore so I decided to go on with them. We took the Tram (the correct one) into town and walked to our new favorite coffee place -- Coffee Heaven. We all ordered us a cup of joe and sat inside for a good 45 minutes, just enjoying the morning. Also, let me tell you that when we woke up we discovered that Mother Nature has brought us another day of gray clouds, chilling wind and light rain. But, again, I'm fine with that because we all remembered our rain jackets.
So we drink our coffee and then walk through the city, going towards the Prague Castle. The Prague Castle was home to many rulers, including Empress Maria Theresa, and dates back to the 9th Century. During the 20th Century, the imposing structure was used both as a presidential palace and as the home of the Nazi governor during World War II. It is huge and extremely beautiful, another pro to justify the hike we have to make to see it? The view! It offers this spectacular view of the city. So we trek it on up, hoping to meet up with the rest of the group and also to see the Changing of the Guards.
We found everyone else -- we looked for the big, colorful group of rain jackets! We snap a few pictures and then head back to the front of the building for the show.
We couldn't really get a good seat to see the Changing, because the crowd was massive! But we did get to see the new Guards marching into the castle!
Once we all gave up on seeing the rest of the Changing, a few of us broke off and went to go wander around for the afternoon. Before we could properly stroll the city, we had to take a coffee break because some of the girls hadn't had any yet and we were also pretty chilly (not complaining though--this is some of my favorite weather!).
Our coffee break gave us the energy (espresso) that we needed for the rest of the afternoon, so we left there and walked back across Saint Charles Bridge and towards the Old Jewish Cemetery.
We successfully navigated our way to the cemetery, only to find that it was closed. Buzz kill! Turns out, today, was a Jewish holiday... So we couldn't go inside and see the headstones upon headstones. After this we wandered our way back through the city with the ultimate destination of a lunch spot in mind. We have passed this thai restaurant multiple times this trip and everytime we're like "yum, that looks delicious", so today we decided to test that assumption.
We were correct--it was so good! I've discovered this summer that I really like thai food. This place had us scraping our bowls -- it satisfied us all enough to keep us full until dinner.
After thai we just walked around and shopped a bit in Wenclas Square. Then we went back to the hotel to make a quick outfit change before we all had to leave for our dinner boat cruise!
My mom is very good at planning vacations -- I think she could have been a Travel Agent if she needed another career path. So when she told me that she read if a European city has water (like Prague), it's usually best to tour the city by boat, I took to heart this advice. I combined this information with something I read in my European Travel book and came to the conclusion that we need to go on a dinner cruise this trip! So we did some research, found the best one and booked a reservation for 19 on Saturday night. It was at 7:00, and after a very confusing public transportation situation, we barely made it to the pier on time! We walked on and were led to our tables on the lower level of the boat. It made my night when we spotted a table of college-age American girls--this must be the right, touristy thing to do! And then when we asked where they were from, it got even better because they said they went to school at Ole Miss, Georgia and Alabama! Small world, right?
The servers open the buffet bar and we take that as our que to go check it out. Y'all -- it was the absolute strangest display of food. So odd. There were slices of white bread, a tray of fruit, slices of cheese in various flavors... We felt like we were packing for our first grade lunch. Luckily this was only the "appetizer" portion... If you could even call it that. So we eat our ambiguous appertizers and wait for the rest of the meal.
When the ladies uncover the rest of the food, we discover that this portion of the meal is equally odd. There is a mix of roasted chicken, fish, steamed vegetables, rice, French fries, meatballs... Very strange! We get a plate of food and decide that it's all about the experience, not the meal!
When we are done eating, we head to the top of the boat for the scenic part of the evening. We hang out at the top of the boat for the rest of the cruise and it was so much fun! Including the other SEC girls, we were by far the youngest people on the boat -- we brought their demograpics way down, but that was ok because we just goofed around the whole night.
Once our 3 hour cruise was over, a few of us headed back into town to walk around. I may actually prefer Prague at night -- the buildings were so pretty! After a while we were really chilly so we popped into a Starbucks and stayed there for a while before heading back to the hotel!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
I am loving this "no stress, no stress" itinerary in Prague. We decided to be ready around 10 and just go from there, so I lazily got ready around 9:20 and headed downstairs early... just because. Downstairs I ran into Emily, Becca, Brittany and Chelsea, and they were all ready to go explore so I decided to go on with them. We took the Tram (the correct one) into town and walked to our new favorite coffee place -- Coffee Heaven. We all ordered us a cup of joe and sat inside for a good 45 minutes, just enjoying the morning. Also, let me tell you that when we woke up we discovered that Mother Nature has brought us another day of gray clouds, chilling wind and light rain. But, again, I'm fine with that because we all remembered our rain jackets.
So we drink our coffee and then walk through the city, going towards the Prague Castle. The Prague Castle was home to many rulers, including Empress Maria Theresa, and dates back to the 9th Century. During the 20th Century, the imposing structure was used both as a presidential palace and as the home of the Nazi governor during World War II. It is huge and extremely beautiful, another pro to justify the hike we have to make to see it? The view! It offers this spectacular view of the city. So we trek it on up, hoping to meet up with the rest of the group and also to see the Changing of the Guards.
We found everyone else -- we looked for the big, colorful group of rain jackets! We snap a few pictures and then head back to the front of the building for the show.
We couldn't really get a good seat to see the Changing, because the crowd was massive! But we did get to see the new Guards marching into the castle!
Once we all gave up on seeing the rest of the Changing, a few of us broke off and went to go wander around for the afternoon. Before we could properly stroll the city, we had to take a coffee break because some of the girls hadn't had any yet and we were also pretty chilly (not complaining though--this is some of my favorite weather!).
Our coffee break gave us the energy (espresso) that we needed for the rest of the afternoon, so we left there and walked back across Saint Charles Bridge and towards the Old Jewish Cemetery.
We successfully navigated our way to the cemetery, only to find that it was closed. Buzz kill! Turns out, today, was a Jewish holiday... So we couldn't go inside and see the headstones upon headstones. After this we wandered our way back through the city with the ultimate destination of a lunch spot in mind. We have passed this thai restaurant multiple times this trip and everytime we're like "yum, that looks delicious", so today we decided to test that assumption.
We were correct--it was so good! I've discovered this summer that I really like thai food. This place had us scraping our bowls -- it satisfied us all enough to keep us full until dinner.
After thai we just walked around and shopped a bit in Wenclas Square. Then we went back to the hotel to make a quick outfit change before we all had to leave for our dinner boat cruise!
My mom is very good at planning vacations -- I think she could have been a Travel Agent if she needed another career path. So when she told me that she read if a European city has water (like Prague), it's usually best to tour the city by boat, I took to heart this advice. I combined this information with something I read in my European Travel book and came to the conclusion that we need to go on a dinner cruise this trip! So we did some research, found the best one and booked a reservation for 19 on Saturday night. It was at 7:00, and after a very confusing public transportation situation, we barely made it to the pier on time! We walked on and were led to our tables on the lower level of the boat. It made my night when we spotted a table of college-age American girls--this must be the right, touristy thing to do! And then when we asked where they were from, it got even better because they said they went to school at Ole Miss, Georgia and Alabama! Small world, right?
The servers open the buffet bar and we take that as our que to go check it out. Y'all -- it was the absolute strangest display of food. So odd. There were slices of white bread, a tray of fruit, slices of cheese in various flavors... We felt like we were packing for our first grade lunch. Luckily this was only the "appetizer" portion... If you could even call it that. So we eat our ambiguous appertizers and wait for the rest of the meal.
When the ladies uncover the rest of the food, we discover that this portion of the meal is equally odd. There is a mix of roasted chicken, fish, steamed vegetables, rice, French fries, meatballs... Very strange! We get a plate of food and decide that it's all about the experience, not the meal!
When we are done eating, we head to the top of the boat for the scenic part of the evening. We hang out at the top of the boat for the rest of the cruise and it was so much fun! Including the other SEC girls, we were by far the youngest people on the boat -- we brought their demograpics way down, but that was ok because we just goofed around the whole night.
Once our 3 hour cruise was over, a few of us headed back into town to walk around. I may actually prefer Prague at night -- the buildings were so pretty! After a while we were really chilly so we popped into a Starbucks and stayed there for a while before heading back to the hotel!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Labels: My Summer Abroad
posted by Sara Kate at
11:23 AM
1 Comments:
Coffee Heaven in the morning, expresso at the midday and Starbucks at night....sounds like there's enough caffeine there to keep the army of 19 moving very smoothly. Mix in a few SEC girls and you've the makings for a real international incident.
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