Praha

We went to Prague (Praha) this weekend, and what an adventure that was…

Chelsea’s sister, Amber, came into town, and is going to be living in the Czech Republic for a few weeks, and we thought it would be perfect to travel out to Prague with her and spend a few days there.

We packed our stuff, set our alarm (4:30a) and went to bed that night. We woke up in the morning (didn’t miss the alarm this time), and did our morning stuff. Then we looked at the clock… it was now 5:15a, the bus we need to catch is about a 10 min walk away and it comes at 5:29a !!  We rush out the door and practically run to the bus stop, with a ton of bags in tow. We get to where the bus goes by, and there isn’t a stop right there, it’s down the street about 75 m (yards).  So we start walking towards it, and when were about halfway to it, the bus rounds the corner. I try to flag the bus down, and he points at the stop with a gesture like, “it’s up there, I’m not stopping here”, and I think, oh crap, we’ve missed the bus, the train, and will have to wait at the train station for an hour or two for the next one. But luckily, he stops and lets us on, yelling at us (in Slovak) the whole time.

We get to the train station in time, and board the train. After we board, the attendant walks by asking for tickets. We hand him ours, and he tells us that the train we are on is a reservation train, and we have the wrong tickets. He lets us stay on the train, but doesn’t seem very pleased about it. The train we were on was the fastest train to Prague (about 4 hours), and it was one of those trains that leans as it goes around corners, except that it leaned the full tilt that it could, even when going around very gentle curves, which did nothing to improve my motion sickness. I got pretty ill, not to the point of throwing up, but I was pretty much useless the whole time. I’m just glad Amber was there to help Chelsea with Skye.

We got off the train, and hopped on a taxi to our hotel, thinking it would be the easiest. We got about halfway to the hotel, and I looked down at the little price sheet the guy had in his car, and it was €30 for the trip downtown (about a mile or two away (if that), a trip that normally would cost maybe €5) !!!  What a robbery !  We dropped our bags off at the hotel, grabbed a map, and headed off to do some sight-seeing.

A lot of these Central European cities look quite similar.   Prague combines the step-back-in-time feel of Budapest and the grandness of Vienna. It is huge and sprawls seemingly forever, with the Vltava river bisecting the city. All of that water makes for a very lush, green, beautiful backdrop for the Christmas-town-miniature like buildings. The streets are all cobblestone and the sidewalks, if there were any, are only about a foot wide, so most people just meander through the streets. It was pretty busy on the main tourist routes, but it was amazing how just a few streets off of the beaten path, you’d see maybe one or two people every few streets. The buildings all share adjoining walls, so it creates this charming maze. It is absurdly picturesque and impossible to take a bad picture, but the photo’s do not do any kind of justice. It was overcast and drizzly on Saturday and a little better on Sunday, although it didn’t help the lighting of the pictures.

We started Saturday at Prague Castle, saw the gorgeous Gothic St. Vitus Cathedral, and a vineyard along it’s slope while sipping on hot wine and a quiet, serene garden at its base. But Skye was also impressed with the castle…

She was doing that the whole time, looking up and saying “wow” in a whisper. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen. And she did it the whole time, not just once or twice. So she must have been very impressed with Prague.  (This current instance of “Wow” was at the NE corner of St. Vitus Cathedral)

We then went across Charle’s Bridge, named after Charles IV, the Holy Roman Empire and king of Bohemia back in the old glory days of Prague. There were artisans and street performers and no one was in a hurry to get across, taking in the old statues that lines the bridge. It was fun being a part of this hustle and bustle, but I bet this bridge, all lit up at night when it’s quiet, is spectacular. We had a rather disappointing lunch and then worked our way back to the hotel because we were all starting to feel the effects of waking up so early. After a jaunt to a shopping center nearby, in search of an adapter for Amber, we returned to our cute hotel room. We were upgraded to the attic suite, and it was perfect, so much charm. We put Skye down to sleep and surprisingly, she did quite well, going right to sleep, and only waking a couple of times in the morning.

We finally woke up around 10a (!!!) on Sunday and got our crap packed, stored in the hotel lock boxes, checked out, and headed out to see more of the town, getting lost once or twice (yes, it was my fault).  The streets were much quieter, until we hit the main touristy areas. We went to the Old Town Square (Staroměstské náměstí) with this amazing Astronomical Clock, got some iced Chai and then stumbled onto a cute street market with little unique knickknacks, fruit, and the like for sale. Again, we weren’t in any hurry to get anywhere and just enjoyed walking the streets. We stopped at the New Town Hall, which had a tower we climbed to get a great view of the city, from within the city. Our last stop was the impressive Vyšehrad castle and the Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul. It’s curious how people, when they enter a sacred place, automatically get quiet. The only sounds were hushed voices and a “wow” whisper from Skye every now and then. The incredibly preserved castle grounds really felt like we were back in the tenth century. The castle is perched on a hilltop, overlooking the river and the views were amazing and so peaceful. It was a great day.

Before heading back to the train to go home, we needed to get some food. There was a “Mexican” restaurant near the metro station that we had seen and wanted to go to (we haven’t had Mexican food in a long time).  So we went there and ordered… 45 minutes later, our food came out, and this was at around 5:30p (we had missed the 4:30p bus for Amber, so we were waiting for the 7:30p bus).  We had a train at 4:30p that we also missed and again every hour after that. We finished eating the “Mexican” food (not even close, it had tortillas, and that was about it for the “Mexican”, spices were wrong, my enchiladas had no sauce (or cheese) and were baked, and there were no refried beans. It was good, just not Mexican) and headed out.

We were running a bit late for our 6:30p train, so I ran down the street to grab our stuff, and met the girls on the way back. Skye was asleep, and we were debating on whether or not we should wake her to take a cab to the train, or let her sleep and take the metro. We opted for the metro, and headed to the metro station, got on, made our transfer, and got to the train station about 10 minutes late. We missed our train. We looked on the departure board for the next one, and didn’t see it. And since we had had some trouble with our ticket on the way in, we asked for information on the next train and if we needed to set up a reservation on the train. They told us the next train was at 21:40. For those of you not used to military time, that’s 9:40p !  We had 3 hours to kill at the train station. Apparently there was a misunderstanding about the train times. Chels had checked a bunch of train times and noticed that it was leaving every hour on the half hour, she had checked up to 18:30 (the 6:30p we missed) and stopped there. Not checking anymore and assuming the pattern would continue, we didn’t think anything of it. But alas, we were wrong. We hung out in a park, and Skye took her first unassisted steps.  Then it began to rain so we went in and waited, and waited, and waited…

I went up and asked the ticket person how long the train would be, because it wasn’t the same train we had taken here, and some of them can be quite long, she told me the train would arrive in Bratislava at 5:00a (again… !!!  that’s 8 hours on the train).  So we asked if we could upgrade to a sleeper car, because there was no way we were going to spend 8 hours in a train seat with an tired, ornery little girl. We got our sleeper car, and Skye actually did pretty good. She slept most the night not really crying at all, and fell back asleep easily after we got home around 6:00a (the train arrived at 5:40a).

So that was our short, but long, Prague adventure. Despite the few setbacks, it was a great weekend!  Prague definitely lived up to it’s reputation.

Here are the obligatory pics and links:

Dancing House (which we only saw up close in passing on the Cab ride, which I’m a bit bummed about)
Lennon Wall