Guten Tag! I finally have some time to sit and write - I've been pretty busy lately. I hope you enjoyed looking at some of the pictures, in the mean time. So here goes...We arrived in Prague around 10:30am - four girls and two boys. When we got off the train, three of the girls decided to split off and do their own thing. Myself, Aaron and the other guy, Will, already had reservations at Sir Toby's but the other girls didn't so they were going to try to find a different one to stay at for some reason. I have no idea why but whatever. So the three of us went to the hostel to get rid of our things and lock them up there. The front desk guy was super nice and had maps and information all ready for us about where to go and what to see, along with what trams went where, etc. The hostel was very cozy, as you might have noticed from the pictures, with clean bathrooms and a nice, big kitchen. We spent the afternoon walking around Prague. Aaron had done some reading to figure out what the best things to see were and also had some background information for us about a lot of the attractions. Almost the entire city had cobblestone streets so it really had an OLD city feel. Our first stop was a huge museum with just about everything you could imagine. We spent a few hours there and still didn't really see all of it! After the museum we checked out some cool towers and the main city square, Old Town Square. It was starting to get dark so we decided to head back to the hostel and pick up some dinner on the way. We cooked spaghetti in the hostel kitchen that night. After careful consideration in the grocery store, we chose some spaghetti sauce made by Heinz. When we opened up the can to put on our spaghetti noodles, it was a can of pre-made spaghetti!! We took the noodles out and poored what little sauce was left onto our noodles. It tasted like spaghettios... but it was food! There was quite a crowd in the kitchen with us, eating and cooking, so it was easy to start conversation with some new people. We met a Canadian from Calgary, an Argentine from Buenos Aires, an Australian girl from the Sydney area and an old Swedish guy who was really nice and full of information about all his traveling.
While we were talking in the kitchen, we watched in disbelief as a bunch of AHA students walked by the window. There were about 5 of them who were supposed to go to Brno, southern Czech Republic, just for the day or one night, I can't remember. So they showed up in the kitchen with an interesting story:
Apparently they had a train transfer they didn't know about and two or three hours into the trip someone started to realize that they should have been in Brno by now. They found a train attendent who laughed and told them, "Warsaw is nice, too! We are almost to Poland!" So the group decided to get off and either go back or take a train West to Prague and meet up with us. They opted for the latter and there they were!
We relocated to the bar downstairs in the hostel and stayed there just talking and laughing for the rest of the night. It was a great night for all of us!
Our rooms were the cheapest available at the hostel, a 10 bed dorm room. They were pretty basic but the linens were clean and comfy and there were plenty of showers and sinks for everyone in the evening and in the morning. There was also plenty of locker space - I'm SO glad Megan told me to get a lock! (Just so happened there is a lock/key store between my homestay here and the U-Bahn station I go to everyday!) Anyway, I was really impressed with the hostel, especially since our rooms were only 250 Koruny a night which is less than $12 or €9!
Saturday morning we did more walking and touring of sites. Basically all day, every day we were walking around the city exploring. We climbed just about every tower and entered just about every church we encountered. Europe has some mind-blowing churches, let me tell you...
Saturday night I made kielbasa for the three of us and again we hung out in the kitchen talking with other guests until 9 or 10pm when we migrated down to the bar for more conversation.
On Sunday we had to be out of our rooms by 11am so we packed everything up and locked up so we could walk around in the city again. We headed to an old Jewish cemetery with a small Holocaust museum attatched. It didn't have the same effect as Washington, D.C.'s but it was pretty good. We randomly ran into a friend from the hostel in Old Town Square and went to lunch at a traditional Czech cuisine restaurant - it was tasty! After lunch we headed back to the hostel to check e-mail and gather our things for the train ride home. Departure was at 17:30 and we got in right at 22:00 (10pm).
So that was our trip in a nutshell! We ran into the girls a couple other times but they were more interested in boys than anything else so we didn't hang out with them much. Some people were dissapointed that we didn't go out and get crazy since it was PRAGUE but I'm really glad we just stayed low-key. I can go out and party anywhere so my #1 priority was seeing the city and getting a feel for the Czech Republic. I'm happy we didn't have to worry about where the "best" place to party was and we had tons of fun in the hostel, anyway.
