Prague

May 23^rd, 2011

The weekend is over and what a whirlwind it was. We didn’t arrive to Prague until late Friday night. After arriving to our hostel we all crashed and enjoyed sleeping in a little Saturday morning.

Prague is an amazing city with a lot of history. We started off Saturday by walking to the Charles Bridge. It was jammed packed with tourists and street carts selling trinkets and pictures. After making our way across we grabbed a quick bite to eat and made our way up to the Prague Castle. It was a hike, but the views at the top were completely worth it. The castle is massive and expands a much larger area than I was expecting. It too was full of tourists. The views were even better from inside the castle- you could see how large Prague actually is. The church inside the castle walls was beautiful and contained multiple, large, intricate stain glass windows. When the sun was shining in through them it looked like the walls were painted in reds, purples, and greens- absolutely amazing!! After the castle we headed towards Old Towne Square to see the astronomical clock. We arrived in the square 10 minutes until 6:00pm so we waited around to see the show that occurs on the hour. It was very impressive considering it has been occurring for over 600 years! We then slowly made our way back to our hostel to rest before heading out to dinner. Dinner was fantastic. We went to a little Czech restaurant not to far from our hostel. The atmosphere was great! There was an old Czech man playing an accordion and the table next to us- full of Czechs- started singing along with the accordion player. It was something I’ll never forget!

Sunday we planned to take it easy and stay out of the tourist areas of the city. We started by heading away from the Charles Bridge to a (sitedel?). The graveyard was massive and family tombstones were scattered all over. We walked around the garden for a while then decided to head back towards our hostel and do some shopping. Everyone enjoyed being able to relax and enjoy the day. Even with having no plans, we all still got to see a lot of the city which was enjoyable.

Today we took a train from Prague to Hannover, Germany. It was a long day of traveling and I am exhausted. After we arrived in Hannover we headed out to dinner at a local place. We met our host students at the restaurant which was nice- the food was amazing. It was a great way to get to know whom we will be living with for the next several days. My host student is very nice and I think we will get along well. Her apartment is gorgeous, her flatmate is also very nice, and she has two adorable rabbits.

Well it’s been a long day- tomorrow is back to the grind so I better get some sleep!