Feb 29th – Day of Relaxing and Touring Prague

So the initial plan was to wake up at 9am, to get dressed and be ready to go tour by 10am or so, when what actually happened was that we woke up at 10am and finally got out noon or so. Which with my parents, I know they are thinking ‘Not surprised’, but in my defense, I have been doing well with getting up earlier and being ready to take the day. But I guess the relief of staying with my family, made me sleep more sound than I have in Spain all together. Not that I don’t sleep in my host home, I love my host family and feel very safe with them…but there’s something about staying with your family that settles everything out. Geoff, Rachel, Nixon and I went to go have lunch at a restaurant near his apartment called Baang! And in the Czech Republic, they are very dog-friendly, so Nixon can come in restaurants, metros, offices, pretty much anywhere. The waiter will even bring a little water bowl for the dogs! Cool! Geoff served as our translation of the menu since it was all in Czech…which was a different experience in itself, because this is the first time since I’ve been in Spain that I haven’t been able to understand anything! Strange since the last time I felt this way was my first day in Spain and probably up until the rest of that month! Most don’t know English here and if they do, it’s because they work or live in more touristy areas of Prague or they are my age. Once we had heard on the menu that there was rump steak, we both jumped at the chance to finally have some beef! Didn’t think I would miss it as much as I do, but I have been craving to sink my teeth into a good steak! Rachel and I both ate ours so fast that we didn’t realize how fast we ate it until we looked over at Geoff and he had just started eating his meal! Nixon was snuggled up around my feet dreaming away, and it was so cute! At some point he had a nightmare and shook himself awake, which I think startled him. But he just looked up, and then snuggled into my feet again. It’s hard being so cute all the time! Then we ordered dessert…gosh, I’ve been craving sweets! I had vanilla ice cream with warm raspberries in a raspberry sauce…yummy. And Rachel had a chocolate mousse with cherries. Then we got a mini tutorial from Geoff as to how to get to the places we wanted to see, how to use the map, our local cell phone, and then we went to the tram station so he could show us how to understand it. Good thing, since we would’ve been clueless without him!! Then he had to go back to work and set us on our way to head up to the Castle Prague. It’s one of the biggest castles and is even in the Guinness Book of World Records…or so James told me. I could see why too, because it was HUGE!! You can see it from the river, and it’s up on a huge hill…too steep to trek, unless we really wanted too. Even though Geoff had told us how to listen for our stop name, when it came to practice it was completely different! It didn’t sound the same and was probably twice as hard to catch what was being said! Slovak languages are so hard to understand and are not close to any correlations in English at all! But Geoff did help when he gave us the golden rule: follow the crowd. He was so right! Walking up to the castle, it was amazing…a mix of gothic architecture and color schemes appealing to the Czech people. Whites and reds on buildings, as well as whites with lavender…weird. The castle is surrounded by a city wall, so once we walked through and toward the cathedral in the middle it was breathtakingly astonishing. The amount of detail and usage of gold with the dark stone in the gothic architecture…it was wonderful. Then we followed the crowd down the hill in the castle walls to just outside the city wall. A spectacular view of all Prague…gorgeous, and accented with a beautiful overcast/sunset…I say both because it would be a sunset for a bit, then pretty overcast. Outside of the city wall were two guards, who seemed to make quite the commotion as they are like the guards in England outside the palace. They can’t move and must remain motionless as much as people taunt and take pictures of them. We were about to walk down then hill, as the map said to head toward Charles Bridge, but we realized this wasn’t the exit from the castle we needed to take. So we trekked back up the steep hill in the castle walls, past the glorious cathedral, and through the entrance of the castle; which we didn’t see when we first got there since we came through the side. Good thing we made this mistake because when we got to the front, we were just in time for the guard change for the night! It was pretty cool, and they were very nice with letting people take pictures of the whole procession. After we saw the entire view of Prague that Geoff told us we would recognize on site. It blew the other site we just saw out of the water. Taking a deep breath, we then trekked down the hill, following the group, to see the Charles Bridge. History note from James, Charles Bridge is one of the oldest standing bridges left from the century birthed. The others have been long since gone and it should’ve gone a long time ago, but still stands and is completely safe. When we made it to the bridge, the sun was setting behind the castle and the ambience of the lighting from the sky, the lights, and the reflection of the river made it such a gorgeous picturesque moment we walked into. It almost didn’t seem real and I felt like I was literally in the pictures I see of Prague at this time, or even the paintings. It was then that I realized that Prague truly doesn’t get the credit it deserves because it is more beautiful than Paris. Yes, I said it, and I’ve been to Paris. It is gorgeous and well worth the trip, but Prague blew it away. I was stunned and at the same time happy that it doesn’t get the hype it should since it was take away from it. Painters, tourists, and natives were all over the bridge in awe as we were. I think we spent probably half an hour to 45 mins on that bridge alone. Once we finally left, we followed the crowd toward old town square. A section of Prague that has the clock tower that everyone hears about, several old buildings and is the remains of old Prague. It’s basically a plaza in Spain context. Seeing Prague at night was beyond anything I could have ever imagined and I loved every minute of it…I was actually happy that we got such a late start to the day because I wouldn’t have gotten a glimpse at this beautiful sight otherwise. From there, we were starting to get a little hungry but knew we were having dinner with Geoff soon, but we had to get a snack. We stopped by this place called Half and Half to get a hot chocolate and a slice of pizza. When we asked if the cashier spoke English to order, she immediately yelled for another girl to come speak to us. Funny. After the slice I wanted to eat the whole pizza but I knew I needed to wait, so we left shortly after. But not before we had finished what was hot chocolate pudding in a cup. That’s literally what the hot chocolate was like there and when we told Geoff he nodded and knew exactly what we were talking about. It was weird, but really good. Figuring out navigating the streets with our trusty map was surprisingly easy and I was doing really well…we didn’t need to call Geoff once for help! Once we got to our tram stop, we boarded and were on our way to Geoff’s apartment where he was coming to meet us. I couldn’t believe how much more safe I felt here in Prague. No awkward staring, no sleezy guys…none of that. I was nice! But it was winter in Prague so we were tired, cold and ready to snuggle up and get warm back at the apartment. For some reason we felt like having pasta and since Geoff wasn’t feeling too good, we pre-ordered from a place that he really liked. Once we went by, picked up the food (with Nixon of course) and came back, Geoff was pooped and went to sleep. We ate, watched movies on his t.v. and then before going to sleep, took Nixon to go pee. Funny how dogs can tell if you know their tricks; because Rachel tried to walk Nixon and he was all over the place and made it very hard for her to get him to behave. However if I walked him, he stayed close by, followed direction and knew I was on to him. Always two steps ahead pup, I’ve seen it before! Once we brought him in, I cleaned off his paws and we went to bed.