Seeing lots and lots of Praha (plus Castle and Don Giovanni)

    Although I thought I would be traveling alone, the magic of hostels brought me the fortune of being roomed with these two girls from St. Louis-- Emily and Jennifer. They were really nice girls and invited me to join in on their plans at any time, if I wanted to. I thought it’d be nice to have someone to take pictures of me :) so the three of us went out to walk around and see some sights.
 
    For the first day, one of my biggest goals was wandering. We went all over the city together on our own walking tour. We saw the Old Town center and the Astrological Clock, walked up the riverbank towards the Charles Bridge, and the area of shops and old homes around the entrance to the castle. We made a few stops for hot dogs and gelato but were pretty busy taking in as much as possible.
    We only saw part of Prague Castle, or Prazsky hrad, today, as the tickets we bought allowed us to go in and out of the museum for several days. One of the first things we did was go in St. Vitus’s Cathedral. OH MY GOD. SO beautiful. Inside was some of the most beautiful stained glass I have ever seen. And I’ve been to Notre Dame. This was serious. My pictures will no do it justice, but it will be forever in my memory. I was lucky that Emily was an art history major in college because she knew SO much stuff about the architecture and the pieces of art we looked at all day. It was like having my own personal tour guide! In the cathedral she showed me the influences of the different decades/centuries of design, since different parts of the chapel were completed many years after others.
    Inside the cathedral there is a scary tower, the South Tower, which is 315 feet tall (and, I’d assume, MORE in steps), which Emily and I climbed. It is really steep and extremely narrow, and was not built for anyone who was taller than 6 feet, had any degree of claustrophobia, or for streams of two-way-traffics of people to be passing each other. This made for a frightening, seemingly never-ending experience. However, it was still neat to do, and we saw some cool views at the top.
    After that we wandered around some old streets with shops inside the castle grounds with lots of artifacts. We saw some ancient torture devices (just as any worthwhile castle would have!), AND, we went to a “doll museum,” which had a huge exhibit on Barbie (SO random) that we got a kick out of. It was kind of like Barbie through the ages, so they had some neat old ones, and then ones of the Spice Girls Britney Spears. Why? Why in the Prague Castle? No idea.

    Exhausted from the castle, we went down the hill and got some hot dogs and Snapple before heading home. There are hot dogs everywhere here. At this point we had walked very far away from where we’d began, and trying to navigate home from the museum was tricky. We decided to take the underground back, which we had to be economical about. Even though everything is significantly cheaper here than... well, anywhere else I’d ever been (thanks to the we-have-only-recently-been-accepting-visitors-because-of-communism-and-we-want-your-money tourism views), this was the end of a year of spending a lot of money, and I still had to watch it. With the subway here you don’t buy a one-way or two-way ticket, but a ticket worth 75 minutes or 90 minutes, etc. So you’ll want to work it right to get the most bang for your buck. Be warned, potential Prague-travelers.

    In the evening we grabbed some traditional Czech food (including some apple strudel-- yum!) and then went to see the marionette version of Don Giovanni. Marionettes are said (at least said by my guide book...) to be a very old tradition in Prague, and this one is extra special because of Mozart’s history with this city. The show was interesting, but after a VERY full day of running around, we were a bit sleepy. All I know is that Don Giovanni is quite the ladies’ man.