Sick in Prague

So we got up around 9 on Friday and headed out to do the touristy stuff of Prague. Prague is such a beautiful city and it really reminded me of Brussells. It's so unlike Paris and I loved that aspect. First we went to the Charles Bridge which is this amazingly gorgeous bridge that goes across the river around Prague. It's closed to cars, so there were just a ton of tourists and then people selling stuff. There were statues on the sides of the bridge which were really pretty.

 Here's a picture of the bridge before we were on it.

 This is a view from the bridge of Prague Castle, which we visited later.

Another view from the bridge.

You can see some of the vendors here.

This has an interesting legend to it. Apparently the first time you cross the bridge, if you touch the cross on the part here, you can make a wish and it'll come true. Goodness, with so many of these things all over Europe, my wishes better start coming true!

So pretty.

We then made our way over to this place called Old Town. This was the area that really reminded me of Brussells. It was all centered around this one beautiful square. There were two cathedrals that were so pretty. It was interesting because again, they were so different from the other cathedrals I've seen before. I loved them.

If you look closely at the top of this tower and see the red speck, that's a man dressed in medieval clothing playing the trumpet. Apparently he does it every hour. It was the most hilarious thing ever. Everyone had crowded around waiting for it and when he was done, everyone cheered. So neat.

After walking around this square for a while, we headed for lunch. Jacob knew a place that had good, cheap Czech food. He ordered fried camembert and I ordered goulash, both traditional Czech foods. My goulash was really good, but really rich. Jacob let me try the fried camembert and that was pretty good as well. The amazing thing about Prague in general is that the food and pretty much everything else is SO cheap. It was such a breath of fresh air coming from Paris where I always order water with meals just to pinch pennies.

Here's where we ate

 Goulash with bread dumplings - it was similar to a beef stew

After eating here, we headed off to Petrin Tower which is essentially a mini Eiffel tower. It's up on a hill and gives a great overlook of the whole city. We walked about 20-30 minutes to get there and once we got there, we walked up the steps. The staircase was in very tight circles and it took us about 10 minutes to walk up. The views were absolutely amazing.

A small word of advice: If you aren't used to eating super rich food and then you go on a 20 minute hike and then climb up a tall, tight winding staircase, you may or may not get sick - hence the title of this blog. But hey, don't let it ruin your day!

After this, we went over to Prague Castle which was another gorgeous building. This is me with one of the royal guards. Yes, I am THAT tourist.

 After visiting Prague Castle, we decided to head back to Jacob's place and take it easy until dinner, and figure out what we were going to do the next day. An hour or two later, we went to a place called Bohemian Bagel. I needed something light on the stomach so I got a bagel with egg and cheese, and it was really good. Since I was feeling better, I figured I should at least try the beer that the Czech Republic is famous for - Pilsner. Since I mostly drink wine in France, and since Pilsner is a reaaaaally strong beer, I didn't enjoy it and drank about half of the glass. Oh well. All for the experience, right? Plus, I kid you not, beer is cheaper than water in Prague. I thought it was a myth, but oh no, so very true. So I didn't feel bad about not drinking the whole glass because it cost a little over 1 US DOLLAR. Seriously?  Ano ( oui in Czech!) Something like that would have cost between 3 and 5 EURO in Paris. Unbelievable.

At dinner, we still tried to figure out what we were going to do. We'd seen pretty much everything there was to see in Prague, so we figured we would go somewhere else. We had some different ideas, but after going back to Jacob's and checking train times and prices online, we randomly decided to go to...Slovakia! What's in Slovakia, you might ask? Not a ton, but we google imaged the capital Bratislava, and it looked pretty. Living life on the edge is a lot of fun. The best part was, that Slovakia was 4-5 hours away, so we had to take a midnight train. So about 9:30, we looked up times online, decided on Slovakia, and walked over to the train station and booked our tickets for a train leaving at 12:30am.


So, off to Slovakia.