Prague

We arrived in Prague Saturday morning around 9:30. We got to our hotel, which was in a great location, then we wandered for a while until Kenney and Ou arrived around 1pm. It was so great to see them! After lunch we spent the afternoon wandering the city – unfortunately it was raining (which ended up being the theme of the trip) but we saw a good bit. Our wandering included Old Town Square, Powder Gate, and the Church of St James, which has a 400 year old amputated hand of a thief hanging inside the door. We then walked up the Old Town Bridge Tower for some nice views of the city. Dinner was a traditional meal of goulash and either potato dumplings or pancakes. Ou and I both decided the pancakes where the best since the dumplings were weird.

Old Town Square

View from Tower Bridge

Sunday we saw Prague Castle, which is the largest ancient castle in the world. I think we were all a little disappointed with how expensive the castle was to tour and how relativity uninteresting it was but parts were very pretty. The most impressive part was St Vitus Cathedral, which was started in 1344, but most of the church was finished in 1953 but you would never know that from looking at it. Lunch was a great traditional meal with good beer. The Jasons had potato dumplings stuffed with smoked pork and I had a smoked chicken leg with my favorite potato pancakes. After lunch we wandered in the Mala Strana section of the city, which is near the castle and back over the famous Charles Bridge which was under construction so we couldn’t take in it’s entire beauty. Dinner consisted of delicious fried dough covered in Nutella and later a drink in a café with a crepe.

Our Nutella "dinner"

St. Vitus Cathedral

Monday we went to the “new town” and saw the dancing building and Wenceslas Square, which is where the end of communist rule was announced in 1989. Then we headed back across the river to explore Mala Strana again. We had some sun so we decided to check out the Petrin lookout tower, which looks like a mini Eifel tower. We had lunch at a decent Mexican place then headed to the funicular railway to go up the hill- unfortunately for us the funicular was closed for repairs so we hiked. We had some very nice views over the city but it started raining. We finished by walking back toward the castle – we stopped for some ice cream to escape the rain and ended up talking in that café for at least an hour. We finished up our shopping then headed to dinner in the town square- we had smoked sausage in the rain.J After some rest we headed back out for some dessert and good conversation.

Tuesday we parted ways with Kenney and Ou (sad). They headed to Munich then to Frankfurt and we headed to Dresden then Berlin via train.

Overall Prague was very nice but I think we had very high expectations based on all that we heard so we might have been let down a little there. The city is pretty and well kept- the people were nice and the food was good (at least in comparison to our Norwegian world). The best part for us was seeing good friends and spending time with them! Check back for more about the rest of our trip to Germany…I will add some more photos to our "new photos" album on the right side in a few days as well.

View over Prague