Ciao Italia!: Prague

This past weekend Tiffany and I went on another bus company trip to Prague. We left on Thursday night at 7pm and drove throughout the night. We finally arrived in Prague at 7:30 am to find a very cold city. We didn't bring our pea coats because we were hoping that the warm weather we've had in Florence would some how make its way to Prague.

We started a walking tour that kind of gave us a bad opinion on Prague. The tour felt like it was 10 hours long and the tour guide said "YA" of "OHH YA" every two minutes.

We went to the famous astrological clock tower, and saw some of the Jewish ghettos. A lot of the places we've visited on our trips had Jewish ghettos, but this was our first time seeing one. People watching was one of the most interesting things for me because of how differently the people looked and acted. Czech's have only been out of communism for 20 years. I figured they are all a little weird because now they are allowed to express themselves and be different, so they all go to the extremes. Some of the people we interacted with were by far the rudest people we have met in Europe. This put a damper on our first day, because it was hard to like a place filled with assholes.

That night we went to a typical Czech dinner as a group and were able to try the famous Pilsner lager. After dinner we wanted to experience Prague's night life that everyone talks about. We went to this bar called the cave that was literally a cave and massive. Tiffany and I were tired from not sleeping so we ended up going home early.

The next day we had a much better Prague experience and were able to see the "fairytale city" people talk about. We walked across the Charles Bridge where we had a great view of the Prague Castle. We went to the John Lennon Wall, which is famous for a quote "You've got Lenin, leave us Lennon" after Lennon's murder. Graffiti was highly suspicious and severely punished during the days of Communism so now people write on this wall all the time representing their freedom using Beatle's quotes. After the wall we hiked up to the Prague castle to see the views of the city. We tried to get a good picture of us with the city behind us, but whenever you ask a European to take a picture of you they will zoom in on your faces as if you're not standing in front of a famous monument.

After sightseeing we went back to the market to try some more Czeck cuisine. It was mostly sausage and lots of different kind of desserts. My favorite were the giant soft pretzels that were sold everywhere.

That night we went to the Karlovy Lazne night club. Its 5 stories and the biggest club in Europe. We were excited because it has been filmed in a lot of movies including "Eurotrip" which is an "American Pie" like movie. Each level had a different kind of music; house, rap, top 40, oldies, and alternative. The people again made this night club interesting to see. It seemed like 30% of the people were under 14 another 30% were over 40 and then everyone else was in the middle. By this time we knew Czech's were weird so this didn't surprise us. After that club we went to a bar called the Coyote which was supposed to be an American spot. It definitely wasn't but we had fun anyways.

I'm really glad that we love Florence so much, because it's great to come back to something that feels homey after such a long weekend.