9 November Saturday
This morning we got up at 6:30am and met Spencer and his friends out on the bridge to watch the sun rise! It was a little bit anti-climactic BUT still cool to be out there so early. Here are some photos of the progression of light..hahaha. The bridge has a bunch of old statues lining each side. We watched swans and seagulls and we listened to the water running. It was kinda cold but not bad.
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We went back into our hostel and finished getting ready/packing all our things up! The other girl in our room was still sleeping so I took these dark pictures of what it looked like in there, haha. She woke up though and we talked for a bit and learned she was from Australia and has been backpacking for three months and is planning on going for two more months! We paid 4 Euro for breakfast...all you can eat, yum. It was in the basement of the hostel in a CAVE and they were playing Disney channel (Phinneas & Ferb) down there too. We had cereal, toast sandwiches with meat and cheese, yogurt, breads, and fruit.
We met Moni, Steph and Mara on the bridge at 8:00...they were late haha. Then we headed into the Old Town of Prague!!! The first thing we did was climb the clock tower to get a view of the city. This clock is famous....it is hard to read that's all I know. On the hour, a man plays the trumpet from the top of the tower and the clock chines and little figures come out and dance I think, but we were on top of the clock when it was chiming!!...I was even standing right next to the man playing the trumpet. You can see all the people gathered below us watching the clock face.
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| we called this the cinderella castle...haha |
Spencer told us about this modern artist's show at a gallery for free right now! We got there and it was closed on Saturdays :( but he had one piece outside of the gallery...it is a giant pregnant woman made out of mirrors and you can stick your head {inbetween her legs} and inside it is hollowed out and there is a movie projection and sounds of a fetus inside her belly!!!! WOW ART! So strange and fantastic.
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Next stop....THE MUCHA MUSEUM!! I don't even know where to start with this guy. Photos weren't allowed...I don't know much about Alphonse Mucha other than he is Mara's favorite artist of all time. He specialized in lithograph prints, and started getting work doing commissions for advertisements for theater productions in the Czech Republic. The prints are beautiful!! He was also a talented painter. This museum was mostly full of lithograph prints and some sketches and a couple paintings. They were all breathtaking! Ahhhh so mystical.
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Our next destination was the Veltrnzi Palace which is up north across the river...would have been way too far to walk, so we figured out which street car we needed to take and we just took it. I've mentioned this before about back in Austria how they don't check your tickets every time you ride something, but if you get randomly checked, you get fined over a hundred euros. Anyways, we have never been carded so we just got on because we just needed one ride. We made it just fine. Cool money.
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| being paranoid on the street car |
OKAY. So Alphonse Mucha is famous for his Slav Epic. There are 20 pieces (only 1 is unfinished)...I don't even know how to describe them. Some have mystical aspects laid over the top of the historical scene, but yeah they describe something in history pretty much. We had a pamphlet we bought and Mara read us a little page about each of the works. We spent a good two hours looking at those 20 paintings. Oh, and they are HUGE. HUUUUGE. I took photos of all of them...they aren't that great though with the angle and the lighting. Here are some of my favorites...and here you can look at all 20.
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The rest of the museum had 6 floors...and a few GEMS. I found a few more by Schiele, three Kokoshka, there was a room of PICASSO, a couple Monet, one Rebrandt, one by Andy Warhol, and one Lichtenstein.
We left the museum at 5? Yeah. Oh and we had a great time in the museum shop. I got a decent size (not too fancy of paper) poster print of one of Schielie's paintings! For only 75 crowns...which is not quite $4. So great. We got other cheap post-card prints. Very good.
We went back into town on the extremely over-crowded street car and we went into the markets. OKAY. So Uncle Jeff warned me about this in an email but I didn't really understand what he was getting at, but NOW I KNOW. He warned me "if you are getting ham under the clock tower tell them how much you want before they cut it off or you'll be paying a ton." Sooo....the menu said like for 100g = 89 crowns or whatever. In my head I'm like...ok 100g is like a portion size, and 89 is like 4 dollars?...maybe that is right? And the potatoes had the same portion weight thing. So they weighed the potatoes first (Kimber and I were getting one order of both, and sharing both of em), and they had dished out 300 grams of potatoes! So it was over 200 crowns! That is $10!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Kimber was just like, okay! And bought it. They cut off some ham, and it was not even a big piece at ALL, and it was also over 300 grams! Over 300 crowns!!! I was not about to pay for that so I got confused first, then I realized, then I got mad and told them I didn't want it and they were really annoyed with me but WHATEVER. We just paid $10 for a medium bowl of potatoes! They were yummy though, and Kimber and I split the cost.
Then we got some more of these amazing cinnamon ring things. WOW. These were 10 times better than the ones we got yesterday. They were fresh, hot off the spike thing, and THICK and doughy and bigger...wow. So amazing. I wanted like 5 but I was out of crowns.
Train left at 6:40! It was so scary, we were there 20 minutes early, and the train was like FULL. We all had to split up and sit alone and we probably barely got seats. After two hours of reading, journal writing, and napping, enough people had gotten off that we had another whole train cabin to ourselves which was nice.
We got into Prater in Vienna at 10:30, and the Minerts and Amy were there waiting for us! That was nice of them. Such a great trip. So tired. I took a shower and got to bed.
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