We arrived in Prague around 2:30 pm on Tuesday the 19th and made our way to the B&B where we're staying. Then we took the subway into town and ate dinner at Maitrea, an amazing vegetarian restaurant. I got the papaya-udon salad with tofu, and it was delicious!
After dinner, we walked to the Charles Bridge and into Hradčany, the area surrounding Prague Castle.
On Wednesday the 20th, we took the metro to Wenceslas Square and walked around Old Town. We also walked down the streets where they shot The Bourne Identity, which, in the movie, they pretended was Zurich. I can now safely say that no part of Prague looks anything like Zurich, or vice-versa, so I'm really not sure how they got away with that. ;) Zurich is clean, tidy, orderly, modernized, remodeled, planned Western Europe; Prague is gritty, original, cobblestone, fairytale-architecture Eastern Europe. The two cities really couldn't be more different. You can really just feel in Prague's vibe and soul that it was beaten down and repressed for so long by the totalitarianist Soviet Communist regime in place until 1989. The city just feels kind of sad and empty (not population-wise; I'm talking metaphorically here), with a ghost of a soul. This was the same kind of feeling that Maja and I got when we were here in 2004, and we were so disturbed by it that we opted to leave a day early and head to the next city on our route. This time in Prague, however, I arrived somewhat expecting that vibe, and so I feel like I was able to accept the city for what it is and thus enjoyed it more than I did the first time.
We ate lunch at a vegan restaurant just south of Old Town Square called Country Life. The food didn't look very impressive, but it tasted amazing! While we were eating, a torrential downpour suddenly started, so the rest of our day was spent cold and wet. We walked across the Legii Bridge, pummelled with rain, and took the funicular up to Petrin Hill, where we hiked up the 300 open-air steps to the top of the mini Eiffel Tower-shaped observation point, Eiffelovka. The view is supposedly amazing, and I'm sure that it is -- on a clear day!
After climbing back down from Eiffelovka, we decided we'd had enough of the cold wind and rain, so we bought some groceries and went back to the apartment to dry off, warm up, and fix dinner.
The giant house we stayed in is a B&B and has several apartments, complete with kitchens, laundry facilities, and plenty of common space in the yard behind the house. They have satellite radio that appears to be permanently tuned to a jazz station from Switzerland, which is awesome for ambiance but kind of annoying when they turn it on in the morning and you still want to sleep for another 30 minutes. They have several huge speakers in the backyard, and each apartment has a big stereo with floor speakers and can tune into the station if they want. The bedrooms face the backyard, which is great for eliminating street noise; however, we have pretty much no choice but to wake up when the owners decide to turn on the music in the morning.
On Thursday the 21st, it was rainy and cold the whole day. We all decided we needed a few hours to just laze around and nap, so we didn't go into the city until about 4:00 pm. We went back to Maitrea for dinner, and then we walked around the city. We passed by the salon where I first got my hair chopped off super-short, just down the street from the hostel where Maja and I stayed back in 2004. Then we stopped inside a giant indoor mall off of Namesti Republiky and went into H&M, where I got an orange crocheted beret.
We flew from Prague to Cologne on Friday the 22nd and almost didn't make our flight. Transit took quite a bit longer than we had anticipated, and we arrived at the airport a mere 30 minutes before the plane was supposed to take off. (I was barely holding my shit together and was stressed out like whoa. I HAD to make it to Cologne for Mark's wedding!) Shockingly, there was no one in line at the airline check-in counter, and they still let us check our bags. Then there was no one in line at the security checkpoint, and our gate was only about 50 feet away from there. Miraculously, we and our bags made it on the plane and arrived in Cologne about an hour and a half later. But it was the most stressful travel episode of my life, hands-down!
No comments:
Post a Comment