Prague

Sorry for the delay! I didn't have stable internet for much of the trip. Posts are also going to be slightly out of order, since my Vienna post is written up on a different computer.

We arrived in Prague late in the evening on Wednesday after a long train ride from Vienna. We were very excited to find that our hotel had a little balcony with a nice view of the castle in the distance:

We woke up fairly early to get a good start on the day and had a nice morning stroll along the river:

After crossing the historic Charles Bridge (seen above), we found ourselves at the entrance of the castle, which reminded me so much of a Ren Faire:

The whole area was filled with small roads and cool old buildings. They also had a totally authentic historic cafe:

 

After a long uphill walk to the top, we got to see all the pretty churches and government buildings. Various emperors and kings have ruled from here for over a thousand years. It is still the seat of government for the Czech Republic, and as such has lots of guards posted about. We came at just the right time to see the midday changing of the guard:

We saw St. Vitus cathedral next, which is honestly one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen:

 

After spending some time in awe of the beautiful building, we continued meandering through the castle area and eventually down to Old Town, on the other side of the river. This place also has some crazy awesome buildings. This is Tyn Cathedral, with the old clock tower on the left:

The clock tower is famous for the peculiar astronomical clock on it's front, built way back in the 15th century and still working today:

We wandered and snacked a bit before heading off on a tour of the communist history of Prague. It was an amazingly informative and fun tour, highlighting many of the tumultuous points of the city's history in the last 60 years. We even got to go down into a former nuclear bunker:

After all the serious parts were done, we got to dress up like communists and drink beer:

We got some dinner at this point; I got a very traditional roast duck and dumpling meal and Bryan got some beef goulash, which is apparently popular all throughout this area of Europe. After hanging out in Old Town Square for a bit, we went on a "ghost" tour that included some of the underground passageways beneath the city. The ghost part of it was mostly silly - lots of talk about orbs and stuff - but we did get to hear some cool legends and see the city at night:

The underground passages were really cool and spooky:

We went down there with only lanterns (and our camera flashes) to light the way. Apparently many people have experienced ghostly things down there, including some ghost hunting show. After the tour, we decided to finally call it a night and give our aching feet a break. We also had to wake up early yet again to catch the morning train to Munich, which I'll cover in the next post.