Prague, May 5

We were lucky that our hotel provided breakfast, I love that. And it was even a good breakfast. It gave us a great start to our day.

We headed out for the day with our first stop - after a short ride on the Prague metro - was the Prague Castle. This is pretty neat because up on a hill overlooking the rest of the city is the Castle which surrounds a large cathedral, St. Vitus Cathedral, in addition to many other stately looking buildings. It was quite a sight to behold. Had we had more time we would have wondered through the many different buildings and the cathedral but because we were only there for a day we couldn't really afford the full tour. Instead we climbed the clock tower of the cathedral to get an amazing view of the city. The climb must have taken us 10 minutes - it just kept going up and up in one of those awful spiral staircases that makes you dizzy. It was quite a good view.

When we climbed down our heads were spinning from the trip down.

We walked around the area for quite some time - we learned that the president himself resides in the Castle, or at least, one of the buildings up there on that hill.

We walked down the hill through narrow streets and beautiful architecture on the way to Charles Bridge. The city is really picturesque. It was a great city to just meander around.

On the way to Charles Bridge we detoured to the John Lennon wall, which was sadly a little bit of a disappointment. We had read that there was supposed to be a mural painted by a Mexian art student of John Lennon, and then we kept seeing art work being sold that had lyrics painted on the wall. There were a few Beatles things but none of them were done that well. It looks like every so often people paint over what is there with other Beatles/Lennon stuff. Who knows?

We headed back towards Charles Bridge. This is the most picturesque of the bridges (there are many) as it contains many statues and generally looks very medieval. It also conveniently takes you directly into the Old Town, quite near the Old Town Square.

As we meandered the little streets I quickly fell in love with this gorgeous city. It is one of those places you just wonder around. I mean the Old Town is fairly touristy but I was ok with it because half of the places were cafes and bars serving delicious food and cheap beer. We kept seeing Russian Stacking Dolls or nesting dolls, or whatever you want to call them. It took us quickly back to playing at our Grandma's house as kids. We came across one store that was wall to wall with all sorts of different colours, sizes, and even full of crazy prints. We were ecstatic to find a Calgary Flames stacking doll! Hilarious. But when I say they had everything I mean they had everything from the Pope, to William and Kate, to Alf, to the Spice Girls, to the president; everything.

Obviously we bought our own little ones, but of the traditional variety.

We kept meandering, getting lost, then found, looking in all the little shops, until we came across the Old Town Square. Here you will find the astronomical clock, some sort of princess castle, numerous restaurants, and a large religious statue. Generally it is a pretty alright place to bed. We stopped here for lunch, I had a chicken curry dish I would not regret. Delicious! Why has it taken me so long to start eating curry? I may never have an answer for that.

At this point it was almost 3pm I believe and there was still a bit of a chill in the air. We wanted to make our way over to the Old Jewish Cemetery, which was in use from the early 15th century. We made our way to the Old Jewish District but when we got there we realized we had to pay to get in, although it looked like it would be pretty nifty, it didn't look like it'd be nifty enough for our money. Skipped it.

We headed back in the direction of the Old Town Square to try and catch the hourly 'show' by the astronomical clock. We wandered, bought a few additional souvenirs, and placed ourself in front of the clock about 3 minutes before the hour. Seems like everyone else in the area was getting ready for the 'show' as well. When the clock struck the hour a few of the little doors on the clock opened and a few of the little characters spun around, then a trumpeter at the top of the tower did a little number. It was all very anti-climactical. We both looked at each other like "was that the 'show'?" Ha. Everyone clapped really loud, we just stood there in confusion.

We made our way after that towards Wenseclas Square which I would describe as the main area for modern day shops and it is less like a square and more like a long city block with a green space in the middle. It does however, end at the National Museum and the Wenseclas Monument.

I should also mention that through the day we had been keeping our eyes open for a particular bakery. You see my cousin has a friend, who has a friend who was in Prague years ago and still raves about this Chocolate Star Pie she had all those years ago, or something like that. Now she loves this pie so much that when her boyfriend was in Prague she sent him to that bakery to bring her one back. I think thats how it went. Ok, so, now we're in Prague, looking out for this bakery and the day is growing late and we haven't seen it anywhere. My cousin texts her friend who looks up the address and texts it - relatively - back to us. Of course it was back near where we were before. We thought about giving up the search but seeing as we didn't really have much else to do and we couldn't seem to find the Communist Museum, which we both wanted to see, we decided to walk back to find the pie. Prague is pretty compact so it was ok.

Well we got a little lost, and then passed the place, and we walked for what seemed like an eternity - ok I'm being dramatic, but we walked quite a ways. We eventually went into a bakery/cafe under a slightly different name only to find out it was the one we were looking for! And it had Chocolate Star Pie! Much success. We ordered a piece to share and grabbed a seat. And well, it was pretty good, but I don't know if it was worth all the walking. ha. Either way it was quite an adventure to find one little piece of pie.

After that it took some serious motivation to get up and head back towards our hotel. We took the scenic route along the river. It had warmed up and it was a perfect time for a walk.

We made it back to the hotel and recuperated for a little while. We had done a lot of walking.

We headed back out into the city to find somewhere to get a drink and then some food, but first we wanted to go take another look at the river, it was after all turing into a lovely evening for being outside.

When we decided to find somewhere to eat we wanted some more Czech food and some really cheap beer. We walked into and out of a few places. We even walked into one that looked like it had a great menu and asked for a table for two, the guy inside just looked at us, shook his head, waved his hand, repeated "No, No" and walked away. Hilarious. Seemingly if they don't have a table for you here they just send you away, no need to wait, there are plenty of other places to eat.

So we had to find somewhere quick as everywhere was filling up fast. We finally found somewhere, and I wish I remembered the name of the restaurant, because it was some sort of chain restaurant that was themed on communism - as best as we could understand at least. The bar tenders and waiters were dressed up. When we first walked in the guy behind the bar just shook his head at us but then found a table we could sit at.

Dinner consisted of potato pancakes with sauerkraut and we split a dish of fried cheese and fries with tartar sauce. ha. Could it have been a greaser meal? I think not! But it didn't matter because it was delicious. We also had more beer, this time I tried Kozel, a very dark beer, also quite good but I'd say I still preferred Gambrinus. We had a lovely evening and because we were right by the bar the bar tender just kept sliding us more beers. Our tab was only 20 euros for 6 pints and 3 dishes of food. Outstanding.

When we got the bill it came with 2 shots of some sort of 45% apricot alcohol. We decided to taste it first before shooting it but that sealed the deal, there was no way you could shoot that. When we told the bartender it was too strong he just laughed at us. So we paid our tab, left the tip and ran away before he could give us a hard time for not doing the shot.

It was quite an entertaining evening and lovely to hang out with my cousin. I had such a lovely time traveling with her. The next morning she would be leaving early to catch a plane back to England and I would be getting on a (series of) trains for 12 hours to make my way back to the Netherlands. I get to see her again in June and I can't wait! I wish we'd planned more traveling together.