This is one of my favorite cities. I made it to Prague after 35 hours on a train from Kiev. I was little groggy and grungy, but I was really excited to be in another new country. It was really early in the morning. I took the metro to hostel. Everything was pretty close but I had a lot of luggage. It was only two quick stops. The hostel was very central to everything. I had a shower. This was my first actual standing up, with hot water shower in about six weeks. It was awesome. I left my luggage in the storage room, emailed home to let them know I survived the ordeal, and headed out to wander around the city. Prague is not too touristy, and not too behind the times or undeveloped. It's a good balance of cheap and being able to Western things.
I had a map and I just went exploring around all the old buildings. I saw Gehry’s Dancing building, and when I walked along the Vltava river, I got my first sight of Prague castle. It is really beautiful and the largest castle in the world. Prague had a lot of old churches too. I saw Mozart’s house, walked around Wenceslas square, and up the massive steps of the Czech National Museum.
I made my train ticket reservation for Munich, just to make sure I had a seat and knew exactly which time to leave. I checked out the area around the train station too, since I pretty much booted it out of there when I first arrived in the morning with my luggage.
The coolest part of Prague is the Old town square. It’s a huge crowded public square with a couple of really old gothic churches, the old town hall, and the weird clock. I couldn’t figure out why the square was so crowded around this clock and everyone had their cameras out, so I kept walking and checking out more of the square. When I read about it back at the hostel I found out it’s a big deal. The Astronomical clock chimes on the hour and that’s why everyone was going nuts. I went back to check it out on the hour the next day, so I wouldn’t be missing anything.
It was built in the early 1400’s and Wikipedia says “The Prague Astronomical Clock or Prague Orloj is a medieval cock.... The Orloj is mounted on the southern wall of Old Town City Hall in the Old Town Square and is a popular tourist attraction. The Orloj is composed of three main components: the astronomical dial, representing the position of the Sun and Moon in the sky and displaying various astronomical details; "The Walk of the Apostles", a clockwork hourly show of figures of the Apostles and other moving sculptures; and a calendar dial with medallions representing the months.”
I walked across the famous Charles Bridge and walked up a huge hill to the castle. Most of the buildings were closed, but I only really had time to walk around the grounds anyways. The view of the city was awesome, and so was the huge medieval cathedral in the centre of the castle grounds. After my walk back down the hill I was starving so I had an awesome dinner at a pub and some cheap Czech beer. There were lots of drink German senior citizens at the table next to me who kind of looked like our circle of friends in 50 years all drinking together. I wandered around a bit more and got a good view of things lit up.
I really liked the feeling of Prague. I even enjoyed the rain here, not like in Amsterdam where it bummed me out, or anywhere else. It made the city more medieval feeling or something. I even saw a Radiohead poster for an upcoming concert, the same tour I saw in NYC. Too bad I wasn’t sticking around longer.
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