Prague: Second Weekend

We're back from Prague, the most beautiful city yet! We arrived around 9 am, well rested for once...this time we coughed up the extra euros and got couchettes for our 10 hour train. It was a little room with two sets of bunk beds three high. A little tylonel PM an hour before and you would have thought I was sleeping at a hilton. Our first impression of the city was a little distorted by the off the map journey to our hostel (which apparently was only 100 meters from the train station), except we ended up wandering though a park littered with alcohol swabs, syringes, and little bottles, and a passed out man. Not a place I would like to be after dark...but it was 9:30 a.m., so it was fine.

We took a guided tour of the city through New Towne, the gardens, Old Towne Square, Jewish Quarter, then ended at the Charles Bridge. About now one of my comments managed to attain "facebook album name status": As we began the tour, a foreign man in his mid-twenties was walking with us. He didn't speak great english, but he was asking me about school and if i liked george bush, then he asked for my email address and tried to enter it in his phone. I was really confused and started to give it to him to be polite when i noticed i had an audience of my friends laughing and staring behind me. I then began to realize that maybe this situation was a little sketchy and asked the man "Wait...are you on our tour?" It turns out he wasn't, although he had definitely been on the tour with us for maybe 10 minutes stalking. I believe Cody has a picture of that captures my awkwardness first hand. Ok back to Praha--The weather was really nice, but it was extremely hott! Beneath Charles Bridge was a little paddle boat rental place, so we rented paddle boats for an hour for 50 czech crowns, which is about $2.50. I was a paddler on our boat, and quickly learned that I am no longer in high school shape. So i sandbaged while Cody did most of the work. I still ended up sweating profusely, but it was determined I was "just glowing." After a long day in the sun, Alison and I went back to the hostel to shower and get ready for a fun night. We had two australian girls staying with us in our hostel and we invited them to come out with us for the night. We all ended up going to Monique, Dylan, Cody, and Mike's place before to hang out. The club we went to that night is called Karlovy Lanze, it is 5 floors with different types of music on each floor, the biggest in middle europe. It was a lot of fun, and there were a lot of Miami students there, Allie and I ended up taking a cab home early.

Saturday morning Allie, Alison, Jessica and I found a little cafe and stopped for brunch and coffee. Everyone basically had different goals for the day, so we ended up splitting up to explore the city. While we were in Old Towne Square I found a little Salvador Dali exhibition, which was the best thing of my life! I got a book of prints and some cards. Alison, Holly, and I shopped for souveners and czech amber in the Jewish Quarter for most of the afternoon. We decided to try dad's restaurant recommendation, Metamorphosis, and wandered Old Towne square for quite a while before finding it. We made reservations for 9 for that night...

We thought it would be fun to get a little dressed up for dinner! We ended running into half of our miami group in the middle of Wencelas square, and had fun taking pictures...it basically looked like prom.

Dinner at Metamorphis was wonderful, the cellar of the restaurant was very classic with stone walls and was very elegantly decorated. The food was equally great, and with the czech conversion rate, it was unbelievable! I mean, i'm not gonna say we didn't have our moments where certain people would put hat shaped napkins on their heads, or try to stack the fancy wine glasses, but it was quite classy as far as our group is concerned. When we left the restaurant it was dark outside, and Old Towne Square was so beautiful! We hung out in the square, and took our time on the walk home...Prague is beautiful!

We went to a club only 50 steps from the door of our hostel and had a blast. It was kind of interesting though...at the front of the line to get into the place there was this girl dancing by herself on a block, i felt really bad for her. When you get in, you take an elevator up to the club...and as soon as you get off they hand you a "welcome drink." A policy that deserves consideration from the bars in the U.S. I spent most the night outside on the balcony overlooking Wencelas Square :)

Currently Listening To: Your Own Disaster- Taking Back Sunday

xoxo jess