First of all, I have to apologize, because I have definitely fallen way back on these entries and have not had a chance to get my pictures up on to Flickr or Facebook. That being said, it's a bit cold out today so I have some time that I might use just to catch up. Hopefully my memory serves me well.
So we left off on our second full day in Prague. We decided to take advantage of the "free" (read: tips-based) walking tour. The tour took us through Old Town Square, Wenecesclas Square, and across the bridge to the area which holds Prague Castle, where my mom and I jumped off the tour (after tipping the fine fellow who served as our tour guide) and checked out the castle, while Liam jumped off a little while later to find the Franz Kafka museum. The castle is the largest medievel castle in Europe, very grand and a great walk. We stopped in at one of the restaurants, which was surprisingly reasonable and tasty for being in such a touristy area. The Prague Castle contains probably the most massive cathedral I have ever seen, done in a Gothic style architecture. Standing in front of it is very imposing; hopefully you will see what I mean when I get around to getting the picture up. I believe it was called St. Vitus' Cathedral.
After separating from my mom for a little while, meeting up with Liam, and going to H&M for a little while to find new shirts (I had no clean ones and was running a bit short on shirts as well), we met up again for a drink at a really fancy drink bar then went out for supper. We went to this packed Czech-food restaurant that a friend of my mom's had recommended. We were a little worried that we would not be able to get in, but after a bit of waiting we managed to get a seat, and oh boy am I ever glad that we did. We got some Moravian (Moravia is a region of Czech) red wine and our meals came. The meal was tres bon. I had, and this is going to sound weird maybe, sour cream and potato pancakes with saeurkraut and ham in them, served with a garlic aioli. If you doubt me that this is delicious, then you can go to Czech and try this restaurant out for yourself. It was so good! Liam had something called "Moravian Sparrow" which is actually a very nice pork and my mom had some (I think) venison goulash. All were delicious, and if I ever go back to Czech I will definitely be coming back to this restaurant. After supper, my mom was tired, and thus went to bed. We went back to our hostel where we ran into an American fellow named Trevor staying in our room and went out to a pub with him. The pub was nothing special, but I managed to convince Trevor he should hit on (err I mean talk to) two Czech girls that were standing close by to us. This ended up being a good idea even if neither of the single boys got anywhere, because they took us to another few places nearby that they liked, and we had someone to hang out with. We had a damn decent night, getting home in the wee hours of the morning after walking the girls to their night tram.
The next day Liam, my mom, and I all went to a small city outside of Prague called Kutna Hora, where we actually ran into the American fellow again. We were purportedly going there to see an ossuary decorated with the bones of 40 000 people, mostly plague victims of the time. The ossuary was pretty cool (Liam was uberexcited) but we realized that the place had a lot more to offer, so we got a shuttle up to the Church of St. Barbara, a church similar in style and size to St. Vitus in Prague, and walked slowly back through the town, enjoying the quaint atmosphere, which is actually a UNESCO protected site (the town, not the atmosphere). All in all, the village is very pretty, relaxing, and worth seeing if you are spending time in Prague. We came back to the city, and Liam and I went on a quest for a laundromat, which we never found. Instead, we tired ourselves out walking so much that we went and slept immediately afterward.
The next morning was interesting. I won't go into all the details, but basically I panicked because I was running out of money and we spent some time trying to figure out if we could work in Europe somehow. After talking with mom at lunch that day, I decided to continue on with the trip but keep my ears open for possibilities to go home a bit early or maybe work if possible. We said goodbye to my mom and decided to head to a city in Czech called Usti nad Labem to meet a friend of Liam's.
There's not too much to tell about Usti except that we met some pretty rad people there, had a few nights of free accomodation (thanks Cody, if you ever read this!), as well as internet and Smash Bros Brawl. All times had in Usti were great. One thing that I did experience here that I had not in Prague was the traditional manner of Czech pub-drinking. Instead of ordering your beer, you merely have to withstand it appearing in front of you like a dang ninja every time the beer you have gets low. If you want to stop drinking, you have to be alert and tell the waitress not to bring you any more beer, or put something over top of your beer mug to signal the same thing. It's an interesting way to do things, but kind of makes sense with the Czech style of beer, which is incredibly easy to drink lots of.
Next up was a quick stop off in Germany before we moved on to conquer Poland. Tune in next time!
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