prague

immediately after class on friday me and 7 others headed to prague for the weekend. we arrived to our hostel around 7 pm. it was the nicest hostel ive ever stayed at. this is a photo of the eating area / bar. i forgot to take one of our rooms but we had fluffy comforters and larger beds than at my own apartment.

since we hadnt really eaten since before lunch, we were starving and went to a nearby czech restaurant. they had items on their menu like wild boar, rabbit, venison, but also chicken!! the food was amazing and i finally found a beer i like, its my favorite so far - called hoegaarden - which is also back in the states. since everyone wanted to go to bed after that, ryan and i headed out to a local bar by our hostel for an hour.

on saturday we woke up a little early to make sure we got to the prague castle before the huge crowds.

the st. vitus cathedral (in prague castle) had the most beautiful stained glass windows ive ever seen and is the largest castle ive been to. the kings of bohemia, holy roman emperors, and presidents of czechoslovakia have all had their offices here. according to the guinness book of world records, this castle is the largest coherent castle complex in the world and dates back to the 9th century. as we exited the castle and headed towards petrin hill, we came across some performers. this is the view of the castle on the way.

after a hike up the hill, we were pleasantly surprised with some sort of medieval festival going on. there were sword-fighting demonstrations, lots of good food, and mulled wine (which is amazing). we climbed up the petrin lookout tower which is the "sister" to the eiffel tower. even though this tower is shorter, the eiffel tower stands at a lower altitude because of the hill that petrin tower is located on. the second picture has a building that looks like its from candyland or imaginarium of dr. parnassus.

after that wonderfullllll experience, we wandered a little bit with the intent to find the lennon wall. since the 1980s, it has been filled with jon lennon-sinspired graffiti and pieces of lyrics from beatles songs. the wall is continuously changing and the original portrait of lennon is long gone after being covered with layers of paint and graffiti. we spent time reading others' graffiti and of course added our own names and such to the wall.

since this was a day packed full of touristy things, of course we wanted to see the mucha museum. we stumbled upon old town square on the way, which houses the astronomical clock and was having some sort of food festival. we stopped to see the giant clock, eat crepes and do some people watching. we eventually found the mucha museum, dedicated to works of alphonse mucha. he is one of my favorite graphic designers / artists, and even designed some of the stained glass for the prague castle (the drawing of one in the photo below). he is known for is art nouveau paintings, illustrations, advertisements, and designs. hes simply amazing. to see some of his work, you can go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mucha

after heading back to the hostel and relaxing for...2 minutes, we went out to dinner as a group at the other czech restaurant located nearby. i had chicken again of course :) 4 of us were interested in doing a pub crawl and getting to know other people our age, so we joined a bunch of other english-speaking friends (people from all over the world), and went to a couple bars.

since we had seen most of the "touristy" prague things, we were able to relax and wander around prague the next day. our hostel was located near a large park (which happened to be on the way to the other castle we wanted to see), so we journeyed through the beautiful fall forest and i creeped on photographed people. the other castle, vysehrad castle, was much smaller, and dates back to the 10th century. it contains the basilica of st. peter and st. paul, and also the vysehrad cemetary, which houses the remains of many famous czech people. theres a legend saying that this is the location of the first settlement which lead to the developement of the city of prague. the basilica had gorgeous art nouveau frescoes (unlike any other basilica ive been in). i was kind of obsessed. 

on the way back to the hostel, we stopped in wenceslas square and did some souvenir shopping. last minute, we decided to go back to the river to watch the sun set over prague castle. 

that night, ryan and i ate dinner at our hostel since the other girls had wanted to go to an opera. we wanted to watch the cowboys/vikings football game instead so we found an american bar and watched the vikings winnnnnn! unfortunately, we had to leave the next day. prague is probably my favorite city so far. its variety of architecture (in my favorite style) and the large amount of art nouveau art won me over :)