our first day in Prague!

Everybody, I super super apologize. It's been a few months since I posted last, and these pictures are from way back in October. There was computer trouble and crazy stuff going on at home and I got unmotivated, but things are getting better now. And plus, my awesome roommate sent me Laini Taylor's novella Night of Cake and Puppets to read online, and it's set in Prague, and I got inspired.

Our first full day in Prague, we woke up in our hostel room with no idea who our other two roommates would be and were pleasantly surprised to discover that they were both attractive young Irish gentlemen, so that was a nice way to start. We had excellent weather and beautiful blue skies, so after a cup of tea in a nearby cafe and a few minutes of poring over our tourist-friendly map, we decided to take a stroll in the direction of Old Town, sticking near the Vltava River (pronounced, improbably, VULL-ta-VAH).

Even just from that walk, we quickly got a feel for the city's diverse, ornate architecture.

(Up on the hill there is one of Europe's biggest castle complexes. More about that later. For now, we admire it from afar.)

The plan was to walk along the river to the Jewish district for a tour, but we got distracted by the extremely famous Charles Bridge. You know, the one you always see pictures of on the Internet, taken at night in the fog without the ubiquitous hordes of tourists.

This is what it really looks like. Even with the crowds (and without the atmospheric fog), I found it to be truly majestic.

The huge statues of saints and angels that line both sides of the bridge were stained black with pollution and time, giving them sort of a somber appearance. Many of them also hunched slightly inward, so that they seemed to loom almost aggressively over the passersby.

After wandering around on the other side of the Charles Bridge for a while and doing a bit of shopping (during which I learned that paying for something in euros in the Czeck Republic is actually more expensive than paying the equivalent amount of crowns) we found all these padlocks on a railing by the river. There are places along the Arno in Florence that have padlocks like this. Couples put them there to symbolize their enduring love for one another.

Around lunchtime, we wandered into a cute restaurant somewhere near the Kampa island, mostly because their sign promised pancakes. I wanted me some pancakes, so we went in. 

And by pancakes, it turns out they meant crepes, which was honestly just fine. You all know me, I don't usually take pictures of my food. But look at this magnificent masterpiece. (It was delicious.) 

After lunch, we went in search of the John Lennon Wall, which our excellent tourist-friendly map told us was nearby. And we found it!

And it was beautiful! There was a guy playing Beatles songs on an acoustic guitar, and visitors singing along, taking photographs, adding to the writing with Sharpies or pens or whatever came to hand.

There's my contribution. Seemed appropriate.

Following the Lennon Wall detour, we continued our search for the Jewish quarter, stopping often to take pictures. Prague really is improbably beautiful. Look at this mess of swans.

Another view of the Charles Bridge, of which I could not get enough photos.

Not sure what this building was, but I thought it was pretty.

We did eventually find the museums in the Jewish quarter. They were pretty extensive, including a temple structure where the walls were covered in the names of those lost to the Holocaust, several displays of Jewish religious artifacts and their cultural significance, and a room showcasing children’s drawings from the concentration camp at Terezin. We finished our tour in the only place we were allowed to take pictures: the ancient cemetery, which was vast and very full of crumbling tombstones leaning crazily into one another. 

After the tour, we made our way the main square of the Old Town sector of Prague, on the hunt for our next landmark, the famous astrological clock.

And here it is, as impressive as we imagined. My roommate was kind enough to take a picture of me in front of it. 

We went back to the hostel to grab some coats, as it got pretty chilly once the sun started going down, and ventured forth again for dinner. We ended up getting Thai food at a nearby restaurant, which was (a. delicious and (b. a welcome interruption of ethnicity to our exclusively Italian diet for the past months. After dinner, we decided to go out in search of a dance club that our lovely tourist map recommended, called the Chapeau Rouge. On the way, we ran into two other young people who spoke English, though one of them, Elias, was Spanish and the other, Paula, was German. We all went to the club together and spent an enjoyable, if somewhat noisy, evening there.

Stay tuned for day two, and again, my apologies for the long hiatus. My goal is to get the rest of the posts done before my spring semester starts up in mid-February. We'll see how that goes. In any case, thanks for sticking around!

- Kasha