PRAHA

8 November Friday

We got up at 7:45 and were out in the beautiful world of the Czech Republic by 8:20!  We grabbed some breakfast at this bakery shop.  First of all, these circle bread things covered in cinnamon were recommended by my uncle Jeffery as the most amazing thing ever...and so I was excited to try one (but I didn't till the afternoon).  And yes, of course, what would my post be without photos of what I ate?  This muffin was unreal...it ended up being like strawberry rhubarb.  mmmmmm.  And the money is different.  Yuck.  20 = $1....so everything we bought we had to divide by 2 and remove one decimal place...toooooo complicated.

Our first stop was the "castle" of Prague.  Well I never really felt like I saw a castle (compared to Salzburg, Budapest, Bratislava...) BUT we DID have to climb a bunch of stairs to the top of the hill, and there was a decently beautiful view at the top.

We bought a ticket that got us into the palace, St. Vitus Cathedral, St. George's basilica, and "Golden Lane".  First stop was St. Vitus Cathedral.

WOW

This place!!!

Totally gothic building...skeleton structure and gothic windows, rose windows, tons of stained glass.  In fact, there is a particular stained glass window in this church that was extremely famous by Alphons Mucha.  Sad to say I had never heard of him before planning for this trip, but he is Mara's favorite artist of all time, so we had a bunch of museums specially planned to see his work, which I had no problem with!!  So this window he did is amazing...the colors all have a specific representation.  I think blue at the edges is the past, red is hope?  I don't really remember.  His colors are incredible though.  His figures are SO REAL.  Just wait till you see his paintings and lithograph prints...holy.  Anyways, tons of beautiful stained glass.  Huge open main nave with tons of windows with yellow glass making the inside of the church glow.  I loved it.

MUCHA 

those famous flying buttresses man...

Okay so next stop after St. Vitus was to St. George's.  This building is WAY different.  It is more Romanesque in its structure (we learned all these terms in art...Romanesque means a more wall-bearing structure with fewer windows)...just stone to hold up walls to have a place to meet in.  Super simple.  It was cool to see the two right next to each other.  But the outside is pink!?  Hahahaa beautifulllllll.

(MO)

Next stop was the palace...it was unlike any other palace we have been to.  Not Baroque at all, just simple and much older.  So there was this thing called the 30 Years' War back from 1618 - 1648 and it supposedly started when the Protestants and Catholics were all annoyed with each other in general, and they met at this church for something, and the Protestants threw two Catholics out the window!   They fell thirty meters and lived...this is now called "the Defenstration of Prague" (fenster is the German word for window).  Anyways, we got to see that window.  So cool.

On the way we got distracted by a cute toy shop...they're all OVER.

this is the main "multipurpose" hall where they had many events including jousting tournaments..

THIS IS THE WINDOW

(MO)

(MO)

Last stop on our ticket took us over to the Golden Lane.  So pretty!  I'm sad I didn't get more pictures here.  It was just a little strip of the cutest little buildings, all brightly colored.  The doorframes were tiny!  Like 5 feet tall....what kind of people lived here!?  Lots of them were shops, and some were set up like their homes would have been.

(MO)

We saw a few torturing devices in the walls of the castle...dungeons...also a huge display of suits of armor and weapons and things like that that have been made as replicas.

Here was our first taste of the tredlnk!  OK I don't even know what to call them, you can read the different names on that banner.  It was SO GOOD!  Cinnamon...mmmm.  For 50cz....which is like $2.50.

(MO)

I didn't eat this but it looked yummy. 

We crossed a bridge and tried to decide what to do next.  We decided on going to the Jewish Museum of Prague.  Nobody was really that excited about it, but I had read about it online and really wanted to go!  So my desire made everybody feel alright going, and everybody actually loved it!  We learned a lot about Jewish history, culture, and beliefs.  Even though it is still really really confusing and strange to me.  So this museum has four synagogues we could go into, which is cool because you can't usually get into Jewish synagogues...they aren't like tourist sites like Catholic cathedrals.  These synagogues were set up with historical info and tons of things in glass cases etc.....AND we got to walk through this incredible old Jewish cemetery.  (The names of the synagogues were the Maisel Synagogue, the Pinkas Synagogue, the Klausen Synagogue, and the Spanish Synagogue.)  This area (a few blocks) is called "the ghetto" for some reason.  This cemetery though....the Jews weren't allowed to be buried outside their ghetto, and so the dead had to be buried on top of one another, up to ten layers deep.  There are 25,000 headstones in this small space...but there are over 100,000 bodies buried here.  One of the synagogues we went into, the first one, was empty except for text covering every single wall of names of Jews who were killed in concentration camps.

Klausen Synagogue 

Oh my story about this sign.  The bathroom cost 10 crowns!  But I only had 6 in coins, other than that I had like a 200 bill.  So I walked down the stairs to the bathroom and there was a lady with a tray.  So I put the 8 down..and just tried to sneak in quick and she called me back!  I tried to ignore her (I really had to go!) but she was getting angry so I came back and was like oh sorry I thought it was 10...it's all I have...but NO she didn't budge!  So I went back outside, and Stephanie was in the synagogue and there was a window above me...she saw me (complicated) and yelled out the window to me and I told her I needed 4 cents and she came down and gave it to me hahaah.  SO STUPID!

segway tours everywhere we go

Spanish Synagogue--the most beautiful

can you count all the stars of David?

We finished that museum at 4 I think...our feet were DONE.  It started getting dark...and we decided on a place to go eat lunch (a place recommended by none other than Rick Steeves of course).  We were planning on meeting up with Monika's and Stephanie's friend at 6, so until then we wandered around the shops!  They weren't that great honestly.  It started raining a little bit.  The cinnamon things tempted me again, but I didn't get any.  Instead we got this "GRILL CHEESE"...literally just a chunk of cheese thrown on the grill.  There was a bowl of melted butter with garlic in it with a feather to brush it onto your bread/cheese.

these were extremely tempting...but dinner was soon

So yeah we met up with Spencer...he is Monika's old boyfriend's best friend (he's on a mission).  He is doing a study abroad in Prague for film.  He is from California.  He had another friend he found from the states who is studying abroad in Budapest and he is from the states.  And HE met a girl who is just traveling who is cool SO we all ate together!!  It was delicious.  I had this beef with plum sauce and parsley potatoes.  And at the end of the meal after we paid, our waiter was like "Pay for service isn't included, so it would be appreciated.  Thank you."  And walked away.  We didn't know if we were supposed to tip so this was good!  Actually, not good.  Spencer said they don't tip here!!!  He just knew we were tourists.  So each of us just left him like 5 cents.  We got (expensive, but delicious) ice cream after.  Then we hung out in the main square by the old (famous) clock tower and we listened to this guy singing with his guitar, he was so good!  Another guy was blowing the big bubbles for all these little kids.  It was great to just stand there and chill and not worry about getting to a museum or wasting time, because everything was closed.  SO tired, though.

We got back to our hostel around 10 and got all ready for bed.  We found somebody else's stuff in our room.  We left like all our backpacks and clothes in these cubbies in our room, but they were safe.  We didn't talk to the girl tonight because we were pretty much in bed when she came in.  It was fine though!  Oh and by the way the beds were incredible.  I LOVE the pillows here.