Group picture!
back row: Henry, Evan, Shane, Bernard, Robin (Jay's friend from Canada that was visiting), Warren, Vance, Travis, Richard, Jay, Tommy, Olivier
front row: Ed, Adrienn, me, Lindsey
missing: Ula and Mike (they didn't hang out with the group much)
We all arrived at differnt times, on different days, by different means. I took a plane out on Saturday afternoon with Adrienn, Vance, Ed, Olivier and Bernard. We arrived at our pre-booked hostel to discover that they had messed up our reservation and had no beds for 10 people of our group. The hostel management did nothing to make up for this, and we were pretty much on our own to find a new place. Luckily, Evan and Shane (who arrived by train that morning) had already delt with this problem, and booked us in a different hostel across town (horray Evan and Shane!)
We left our stuff at the hostel (we would check into our new hostel later) and headed downtown. We rented some paddleboats and cruised up and down the river, it was a fun way to see some sights.
Me and Vance on a paddleboat
Heading towards Charles Bridge (most famous bridge in Prague)
Me, Ed and Adrienn
After our boating fun, we got some dinner. It is amazing how cheap everything is in Prague! The currency is called the crown (wrong spelling) and 20 crown ~= 1$. You can get dinner for a few dollars, and beer for about $1.50.
Prague has some really good beer: Pilsner and Budwiser are actually good beer here (not that Pilsner isn't already awesome, woot), they taste much different than back home.
We we picked up our bags and met up with the others to go to our new hostel. It turned out to be really nice, but a bit of a walk from the downtown area. We got changed, and then went back to the other hostel to meet up with the rest of the group.
The night started out with some partying in the hostel common room. Ed, Evan and Travis shared a bottle of absinte in the true Prague spirit. We left and had an exciting journey through the pooring rain to get to a huge club. It had 5 floors, with different music on each floor (techno, trance, hip hop, rock, etc). It was a really fun night, though lots of time was spent going up and down the stairs trying to find people (good workout at least, lol). The large group was split up instantly, and people made it hoe in smaller groups throught the night. The evening ended on a bad note for me, got burned in the neck by somebody's cigerette (stupid smokers...), but I survived. We walked back to the hostel around 4, stopping for some awesome greasy cheap vendor food (Switzerland needs more all-night food stands like Prague) on the way.
The next morning we awoke to discover that we missed most of breakfast (boo), but there were still a few scraps left. The plan for the day was casual sightseeing, followed by a city tour. We wandered around downtown, enjoying the strange street art that is everywhere in Prague (I don't really know why it's there)
One of the main streets we frequently walked down
Cool pic that I can't take credit for (yay Tommy)
Poor superman...
Seriously, what is with the strange statues?
I decided that I didn't feel like going on a 4 hour tour, and would rather spend the day shopping and wandering, so Ed and I split off from the group. We had a nice day hitting all the stores, I bought some skirts and shirts. We had lunch in an Irish pub, and watched some rugby and cricket (man, cricket is a messed up sport...I don't think that I will ever understand it) . It was a chillaxiful day, and then we met up with everyone at 6 to go out for dinner.
Now imagine this: 16 people (no Ula and Mike) trying to find a good, cheap place for dinner that has enough room for us. This is no easy task, we ended up walking around for over an hour. Luckily, I had eaten not too long before, but some of us were starving by the time we found a resturant. However, there were isseus at the resturant involving price differences, and extra fee for music...basically they were very rude to us, and we ended up walking out before ordering. The next place we found was great however, and we had a relly nice meal.
After dinner, some people went back to the hostel and a few of us went out to try and find a nice bar. This proved somewhat difficult, since it was 1am on a sunday night. We ended up walking around for awhile, and then just settleing for the hostel bar, which was open until 4am.
The next morning some people had to wake up at 7 to catch flights home. I was so happy I wasn't one of them, since we had been up until 6 the night before. The rest of us got up later (in time for a decent breakfast this time!) and then Adrienn and I went out to do some last minute shopping and sightseeing.
We watched the clock strike on the hour, which involves a cool show with lots of moving people. The clock itself is really cool too, it has parts for the different months and sun and moon phases. Hmm, I wish I could tell you more, or what it was even called, but I have no idea. Here's a pic at least:
We went to te airport to catch our 3:00 plane, and then travelled back to Switzerland. I got stung by a wasp on the bus :( Poor me...although, it didn't hurt anywhere near as much as I remember (I haven't been stung since I was a kid).
Ooo, one more highlight of the trip: bought some new shoes at the Zurich Airport. Gravis shoes (my alltime favorite brand of shoe) on sale for $40, reduced from $100.
As you can tell, this trip was not about sightseeing or history for me. But you might still want to see some of Prague, so I will pretend I was on the tour, and post some pics from all over Prague:
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