Prague - July 13, 2012

Getting here was tough... 14 hours of this.

Prague is not what I expected. I had the image of a crazy party town, with clubs going  until all hours of the night and beer flowing everywhere. While it certainly has that side to it (and we definitely partook), what really stood out for us was the culture and history.

Holy absinthe selection Batman!

Cool ropework ceiling!

Prague is old. It was barely touched during the war so most of it is still standing. Many  of the buildings around town date from the 17th and 18th centuries, and examples of Gothic  and Baroque architecture abound. The old town square has a cathedral that was started in  1360 and a giant 30-foot-high astrological clock that was high-tech in the mid 1400s. You can see layers of stone flaking off the sides of buildings and crumbling in the cobblestone streets. It evokes a certain...insignificance, standing there and thinking that half of the  buildings you can see were used by people going about their daily 16th century lives. You can feel the layers of history oozing out of the streets. Recent buildings abut ancient  ones and have cutouts so as not to cover up old sculptures or inscriptions.

The two towers of Our Lady Before Tyn

Everything is overly ornate. Railings are gilded in gold, doorways have heads or vines carved into the stonework, balconies are resting on the shoulders of people carved into the  walls. Statues line the tops of all the significant structures. The insides of the cathedrals are something else - I felt almost overwhelmed with the weightiness of St. Vitus' Cathedral in Prague Castle that was begun in 1344.

The people are friendly and we never once felt unsafe wandering around, even late at night after our pub crawl (and David got THE BEST BURRITO EVER from a hole-in-the-wall Mexican place at 2:30am to boot). Most people, especially younger ones, speak English fluently and switch  without a second thought as soon as we say "Hello" instead of "Ahoy" (Czech).

I told you the ceiling was cool!

We spent four nights there. Some clubbing, lots of walking around taking pictures, and tons of eating and drinking. Pints of beer for 30 crowns ($1.5) and traditional czech goulash  with beef and dumplings for 110 meant most days we could eat a delicious dinner out for under $20.

We're on the train to Vienna right now as I type this (and posted now that we just checked into our hotel here). The rest of the trip is starting to take shape for us - it seems like the next stops will be Budapest, Split, then a ferry to  Ancona (Italy) and then maybe Rome, Venice, south France, Barcelona, Paris, ???. 5 weeks to go!