Prague - Cafes, Clocks, & Crystal

Prague...where to even begin. This city contained many unexpected charms. It is considered to be the "Gateway to Eastern Europe" - this means it was cheaper and a bit more dirty, but full of unique architecture, old buildings, cafes, and live music! Prague also seems to be a center for selling crystal. Not sure why exactly, but walking through their stores of crystal chandeliers and glass art left us in awe (and made me want to buy it and ship it all home :)).

We didn't have much of a plan for Prague, which turned out to be a nice change. We knew where we were staying - on the gorgeous boat MS Florentina. It was a great location, close to lots of the sites and liveliness of the city, and came with a delicious buffet breakfast. Nick planned all of our housing situations and they have all been extremely successful! We have stayed in a hostel, a hotel, a castle, on a train, houses, apartments, and now a boat.

But beyond housing, we only had a general idea of what the city was like. Prague was situated on both sides of the river, with the castle and Little Quarter on one side and the Old and New Town Squares on the other side. The first day we crossed the Charles Bridge, a pedestrian bridge full of statues, vendors, and musicians. We walked through the Little Quarter to do some shopping and eat lunch and then stopped on Kampa Island to walk through the park and enjoy some local Czech snacks, similar to doughnuts and fries/chips. We chose not to tour the castle even though it is possibly the largest in the world...or maybe because it could be the largest in the world. It seemed huge and was a combination of 5 or so individual castles, just a little overwhelming and not what we wanted to spend 10 hours doing.

That night we grabbed dinner in the Old Town Square and listened to these amazing drummers entertaining quite a crowd. We headed "home" for an early night and were able to Skype with Nick's parents...so nice to see some familiar faces!

Tuesday we started off in the Jewish Quarter. Little did we know that it was a Jewish holiday so all the sites were closed. We were still able to walk around and read about the synagogues, though, so that was nice. One of the synagogues is the most historic in the country and only exists today because Hitler planned to make it a "Museum of the Extinct Jewish Race"...along with lots of Jewish treasures that are now on display in the museums.

The rest of the day we just walked around the city, saw the Astronomical Clock (pictured above) change at the hour, listened to some great musicians, sat in cafes and played cards. All in all, a very great day!

At night, we went to a black light theater show - very unique to Prague. The show was a combination of pantomime and dance under black light. Basically, the actors had a series of pantomime acts. In between these acts, dancers performed modern dance in costumes that lit up under black light to create a sort of optical illusion. Hard to describe, but really cool to see and experience.

Now we are headed to Vienna, Austria. We are really excited about this stop because it has been so highly recommended from lots of people! We miss everyone and can't wait to be in better touch!

Below are some pictures from the window in our room on the water...in case you didn't get to see them in Facebook.