26 – 29 June,
Woke up early to pack because we got home late last night.
I’ll miss Nanda’s cute little Italian apartment, what an awesome place to stay.
Won’t miss the weather or the dust.
Our flight to
I’m glad we booked a
Our apartment is cute, very simple but comfortable, spacious, and well located. We even have a kitchen! Except for the bathroom, everything is in the same room, so effectively, my bed is located in the “kitchen” while Marisa’s is located in the “lounge room”
I never thought there’d be a day where I’d have to sleep in the kitchen, like a maid.
We really didn’t do much on our first day in Prague, we walked around a bit to get a feel for the area, went to the train station to buy our tickets to Berlin, then went to Tesco’s to get some groceries and make dinner.
From what we had, which is not much, I think I prepared a pretty decent meal for the 2 of us. Beef stroganoff and rice, with vegetables, soggy chips and yucky “hamburgers” We could only have soggy chips because we didn’t have an oven or any oil to cook with, note to self, must remember to steal some butter from breakfast tomorrow to use for cooking!
Flicked through the tv to spot lots of porn. Must try to avoid porn.
Went to a really dodgy internet café, which was full of devious layabout men, who all stopped and looked at us with evil eyes when we walked in. Perhaps because we looked so different from everybody else there, or perhaps they saw easy asian female targets to rob? I’m not sure, but that place made me feel immediately uncomfortable, but I needed the internet to book some flights… and I had so much trouble there, what should’ve only taken me less than 10mins ended up taking over 30mins with trouble with the websites, the flights and times, the dates, and then with my credit card. AARRRGGHHHHH
All the while, a dodgy looking aunty sat down next to me and started looking over my shoulder while I was putting my credit card details in. What more can I tell you about how dodgy this place was? I only learnt afterwards from Marisa, who was keeping a lookout for me in case those dodgy men wanted to rob us, that the dodgy aunty was not only looking over my shoulder, but also picking her nose! EEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW Glad I didn’t see that!
Day 2 - Prague
The 2nd day in
We made our way to the meeting point for the free tour of
The free tour was awesome, the guide was really good, very knowledgeable, very friendly and the tour gives you a good brief history of
When it finished, the 2 of us went searching for a cheap and cheerful meal before re-tracing our steps of the tour, and take a bit more time enjoying each location.
While trying to find a nice place to sit down and eat, we met 2 fellow Aussies from the tour, Sib and Steve. Great people, and great company for lunch.
Lunch was in this quaint little garden café, and it fulfilled the cheap and cheerful criteria with perfect weather. I had the deer goulash and the obligatory Czech Pilsner, while Marisa had roast pork with the obligatory Czech Pilsner. Both were delicious and all for under 2000Kz (or about $Au13)
After lunch, we said a quick goodbye to our new friends, who went exploring Prague further because they only had 1 full day in the city, so I really hope we didn’t waste too much of their time at lunch when they could be meandering around this beautiful city. They were such lovely people, so I hope they have a great rest of their journey.
While we continued to re-trace the steps of the tour. Went back to Municipal House, a very grand looking building containing a really grand looking restaurant that I somehow, in my ditsy brain, managed to recognize from a Czech movie that I watched nearly 2 years ago, called “I served the King of England”
What were the chances of that! It looked almost exactly the same as I had remembered from the movie, and that was set in the 1930s! Marisa and I were so excited that we decided to come back for dinner the following night for something special.
Other places we re-visted, Tyn Church, which I think the guide told us was where some burgler tried to steal some gold from a statue, and this statue grabbed his hand and cut it off. From there on in, this shrivelled and dried up hand remains in this church as a reminder to would-be burglers never to steal from this church. Now, was it this church?? Or some other church?? Hmmz.... Fascinating story anyway, so of course Marisa and I had to go back and see this dried up hand, but before we could the priest on duty kicked us out of the church! I have never in my life been kicked out of church! What did I do wrong????
I would've like to spend more time in the Jewish quarter, visit a few of the synagogues and see the Jewish cemetary, read their stories..... unfortunately, time was against us. Next time, I will definitely spend more time in this area.
These were the things that I wanted to eat in
- One of them great big giant sausages
- Goulash
- Sauerkraut
- Those curly bread pastry things
- Pork knuckles
- Roast duck
Why? Just because every bloody “genuine” Czech food place sells these foods and I’m really gullible, especially when it comes to food.
Instead, for the 2nd night in
A very take it easy morning for us. We will be taking the free afternoon tour to New Town and
We missed breakfast so went to find a decent place for breakky and luckily for us, there’s a cute little bookstore/ café just round the corner from our apartment, frequented by locals, which is always a good sign. And it was cheap. Double bonus!
Then souvenir shopping, I was looking for a specific postcard for someone, but despite seeing them everywhere the day before, I just could not for the life of me, find them anywhere…. Until late morning. *phew* all that walking finally paid off.
We walked around to
Had a cheap and fulfilling lunch and guess what it was? A great big giant sausage! And boy was it good. Very very good.
Then our free afternoon tour. It was pretty good, but the group was even larger than the morning one, probably because more people are awake at this time. This tour was very exhausting but it was well worth it and I highly recommend these free tours of
Here are some of the things I learnt on these tours”
- It is one of the most difficult languages to learn
- In 2002, there was a terrible flood that turned this city into a ghost town because most houses and shops were completely submerged in water.
- Albert Einstein lived in
- Communism started in 1948 and ended in 1989.
- 1918, it became
- 1993, it became
- Jan Palach, a 21 y.o student burned himself alive to protest against communism and made himself a hero for eternity. His name lives on in a square dedicated to him.
- A giant metronome operates in place of a Stalin statue, which was taken down when the Czech people realized what a terrible person he was.
- The astronomical clock is an amazing piece of work
- How to tell which is the left/ right side of the river
- Czech girls are super hot! If I was into girls....
- If you want to be anyone of worth in the Czech Republic, change your name to Wenceslas, because all their heroes have this name.
- AND a whole lot more I can’t remember right now
That night, we heard a lot of amorous noises and squeaking beds in the next room, so even though we avoided all the porn on tv, we can’t get away from it anyway… well, for me it’s not too bad because I can sleep through anything.
I learnt from Marisa that lots of porn is made in
We went to the train station early because there is “no reservation” system for this train route, apparently you just turn up, hop on and take a seat, so if you miss the train, you just catch the next one (one every 2 hours), so we thought we’d go early so avoid the rush, and hopefully get a good seat. I wasn’t too sure about it because
Fortunately, it wasn’t too bad, it wasn’t too bad at all. We had really good seats, and the train was comfortable and we didn’t have to fight with many people for seats.
In
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