Friday 23rd October
There is a company called WESTbus who do bus journeys all over Austria, as well as into Germany and the Czech Republic. We were able to get a direct bus from Linz to Prague for just €26 each, and it only took 3.5 hours. The bus itself was pretty comfy, despite the rather rowdy crowd of Austrians sat right behind us, and it was a good way to travel. Once we arrived in Prague, we managed to find our way to a metro station, buy the tickets (the currency there is the Czech Koruna, and €1 equates to 26 Korunas - not easy mental maths I can tell you!), get two metros and a tram, and walk up a rather steep hill to our hostel, all without getting lost. We were staying in the Arpacay Backpackers hostel, and I would highly recommend it to anyone staying in Prague. It was €50 each for the weekend (three nights), and breakfast was just €3. Everything was clean and nice, and the staff were very friendly and helpful. We stayed in a 4 bed dorm on the fourth floor, where we had an amazing view of Prague castle from one window, and over the whole of Prague from the other - not bad!
 |
| Our view over Prague |
 |
| Our view of the castle |
On Friday evening we headed up to the castle and had a little look around. It was beautiful. We decided that we would have to come back another day and do the guided castle tour because there was just too much to take in all at once!
We headed back down into the town and looked for somewhere to have dinner. We ended up finding a nice restaurant where we had duck, and apple strudel for dessert (the most important part!), and once we worked out the conversion into Euros, we realised just how reasonably priced Prague is!
Saturday 24th October
On Saturday we headed down into the Old Town. We were staying on the other side of the river, and so the first thing we saw was Charles Bridge. We climbed an old watch tower, and this was the amazing view we had of a rather misty Prague.
 |
| View from Lesser Town Tower of Charles Bridge |
 |
| View from Charles Bridge |
The view as we crossed Charles Bridge was also phenomenal, and we were lucky to be crossing fairly early as it became packed with tourists later on in the day. The construction of the bridge began in 1357, and took a very long time to be completed as floods kept destroying parts of the bridge. There are statues of important historical figures for Prague placed along the bridge, which itself is around 620 metres long!
We then headed into Old Town Square, and we went on a free walking tour of the city of Prague. It was so interesting to hear stories, both fact and legend, about the city and its various monuments, and I would recommend Discover Prague tours to anyone visiting Prague. The walking tour lasted around 2.5 hours, and went to the following places:
 |
| Memorial to Jan Hus, a key member of the Protestant movement during the Catholic-Protestant wars. He was burned at the stake for heresy in 1415, but his followers, the Hussites, continued to fight against Roman Catholic rule in the Hussite wars after his death. |
 |
| The Old Town Tower, home to the Astronomical Clock, which apparently is the number one overrated tourist attraction in Europe. Every hour there is a 'clock show' which is not very impressive nowadays, however it is the oldest working astronomical clock in the world, as it was installed in 1410. |
 |
| The Rudolfinum is now a concert hall and art gallery in Prague, and home to the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, however during the war is was made the office of Reinhard Heydrich, a high-ranking Nazi official. Around the top of the building are statues of famous composers, however there is a story that says during the war, Heydrich was angry that there was a statue of Mendelssohn on the roof, as he was a Jew, and so he ordered two men to go up and take down the statue. However they did not know what Mendelssohn looked like, and by accident took down the statue of Wagner, an anti-semite and Hitler's favourite composer! |
 |
| Tyn Church dates back to the 14th century, and was designed in the late gothic style, however construction took a long time as it was controlled by the Hussites for two centuries. If you look closely, the two towers are not actually the same size! |
After the tour we decided to have some lunch, and we ended up in an Italian restaurant. After lunch we went to an art gallery in Old Town Square that was home to three exhibits by Salvador Dali, Jan and Kaja Saudek and Andy Warhol, which were really interesting, even to someone who isn't a massive art fan!
Our plan was then to go on a Legends Tour of Prague, to find out more about the stories told about the city, however we were the only ones to turn up, and so there were not enough people to run the tour. However, the tour guide was very kind, and on his 'walk home' told us a few stories about the Bridge and other monuments, so we didn't miss out altogether! Many of the stories had some form of death in them, and the apparent preferred method of killing someone in Prague was 'defenestration' which means throwing someone out of a window! This seemed to happen a fair amount, and so we were told if we were going to upset a Czech, it's best to do it on the ground floor!
We were absolutely shattered by this point, and so headed back to the hostel via a crêperie (oops!) for raspberry and chocolate crêpes and hot chocolate! Our other two roommates had arrived by the time we got back, a guy from Canada and a guy from Germany, so we spent quite a long time chatting with them that evening and getting to know each other, and it was really interesting to hear about the travelling they have been doing.
On Sunday morning, the guy from Germany joined us to do some exploring. Our plan was to return to the Jewish quarter to do the Jewish museum and cemetery as we didn't see much of it on the tour the day before, however the queue was very long, and so we decided we would come back. Instead we went to see the John Lennon wall.
We walked back through Kampa Park, which was looking beautiful with all the autumnal colours, and onto an island in the middle of the Vlatava river, where we ended up eating lunch in a restaurant overlooking the river. Here are a few pictures from that:
Once I'd eaten my fill of chocolate, we had dinner in a little restaurant in the centre of Prague with our roommates (I had a salad - felt I needed to balance out all the chocolate, plus I really wasn't hungry!), and then we went to see a concert in St Nicholas Church in Old Town Square. In Prague at the weekends there are concerts everywhere, and it would be impossible to avoid going to one. We watched the Prague Brass Ensemble and it was a very lovely concert, and I experienced something I never have before - the pews had heated cushions! It was quite something!
So after two very busy days and lots of food, it's safe to say I slept well that night!
Monday 26th October
Monday was our last day in Prague, and we checked out of our room but left our luggage at the hostel. We had signed up for a guided castle tour for the morning as we hadn't had chance to fit it into the rest of the week, and it was great fun. Here are a few pictures from our castle tour:
 |
| From one viewpoint we could see this, the Petrin Tower. This was opened in 1891, two years after the Eiffel Tower, which it strongly resembles. It was actually designed by the same architect who designed the Eiffel Tower. The Czechs claim that the Petrin Tower is actually taller than the Eiffel Tower, but they seem to be also counting the height of the hill it stands on! |
 |
| Prague Castle and the Hercules Gate |
 |
| The Archbishop's Palace. |
 |
| St Vitus Cathedral, which stands in the castle grounds. The front part of the cathedral, as you can see here, was built in the 1920s, and painted black to fit in with the Gothic facade of the back part of the cathedral. |
 |
| The back part of St Vitus Cathedral in it's original Gothic style. |
 |
| Inside St Vitus Cathedral |
 |
| The Czernin Palace, now home to the Czech foreign ministry, and also the site of another defenestration (throwing out of a window). |
We made it home safely on Monday evening, and I can't speak for Conor, but I was exhausted! I had a fantastic time in Prague, it is a beautiful city and would recommend it to anyone wanting to do some travelling around Europe.
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this rather long blog post!
Laura :)
No comments:
Post a Comment