Last Day in Prague

Since had to leave tonight at 10:30pm we had to check out of the hostel by 10 in the morning. We were a little tired because of going out the night before but not that bad.

We went out for breakfast. One nice thing about Prague being filled with more tourists than Disney World is that you can get eggs and bacon for breakfast! Try going out for breakfast in Budapest...I hope you like McDonalds!

Tour

Samir and I went on a sightseeing bus tour. The other guys didn’t want to and so they went and looked at this church that had a Brazilian saint in it.


We kind of wanted to know a little bit more about the things we were looking at around town. It was about 10 Euros which is a pretty decent price (it was 1hr and 15 mins). They just drove you around and a recording played that told you about the things you were seeing. They had it recorded in 20-some languages! This was cool because this way Samir could listen to it in Portuguese (his first language) which was probably a lot easier. Unfortunately, it was Portugal Portuguese and he kept debating whether it was easier to understand the English or the Portugal Portuguese!

Castle (again)

We went back to the castle to go in the Cathedral. Really cool cathedral.



Church

We ended up going to the church that they went to while we did the sightseeing tour. It was a really pretty little church.


Going home



We took the overnight (10:30pm - 6:00am) bus home. I like overnighting the travel because it saves time. The bus ride was a little bumpy but we were all able to get at least a couple of hours of decent sleep.

Impressions of Prague

Don’t get me wrong-Prague is a cool place. It is cool to see a city that has never been destroyed by war. With this being said, Prague didn’t even come close to meeting my expectations. Prague has been hyped to the point where I was expecting to see one of the coolest and prettiest places in the world. I don’t think that it is. Also, it is overflowing with tourists. I’m not one of those people who are against touristy places. I just don’t like it when there are so many people that you can’t even get a good picture or see somethings because of the huge crowds. I also go to other countries to experience and learn about the culture. This is impossible in Prague. It is likely that the only Czechs that you’ll meet will be the ones selling you souvenirs on every corner.

To be fair, we did have some crappy weather which can take away from the beauty of a place. My conclusion on Prague would be this: go there for a day if it is a nice day and you really like pretty old buildings. Don’t go to experience Czech or Eastern European culture and don’t expect it to be “breathtaking.”

First day in Prague

More sightseeing

Today we went to the old town square and saw the clock tower. The clock tower was really cool and the view from it is very good


It was, again, hard to get good pictures because there were just so many people.

Next, we went to go see the castle. It was a really cool castle with another great view.



Unfortunately the cathedral was closed so we will go back tomorrow to see it.


Dinner

We went to dinner at an Italian restaurant in town. Good food. You are probably thinking, “ok, cool Elliot. Why is that worth mentioning?” It is worth mentioning because it was the first time in my life I did something: not leave a tip. This waiter was a jerk. First thing he did was downright lie to us about the size of the pizza saying it was really small (using his hands to show us the size) and only for one person. We later saw the pizzas. They were quite large and definitely shareable. He must have just wanted to sell us more expensive things. Next he wouldn’t fill up my glass with water. He said that I would have to buy a bottle. And here was the last straw...I was over talking to this group of Irish girls at the table next to us and he comes up and asks me, “Would you like to buy some drinks for these ladies?” I knew exactly what he was doing-trying to put me on the spot in front of them where it would be harder to say no. Kind of like those guys who try to sell roses to guys sitting with their girlfriend at a restaurant. Not going to happen. I just told him, “no thanks, we’re good.” He seemed surprised and stood there for a second and looked at me. He then ignored our table for the rest of time that we were there. We gave his tip to the Italian guitar player who was awesome.

Going out

We went out to a club (Karlovy Lazne) with the Corvinus kids. It is supposedly the biggest club in Central Europe (it is five stories with dance floors on each). It was all right. Definitely a step above the places I have been here in Budapest (not counting the Spa Party I went to) but definitely a step below that club we went to in Serbia (on the 8th floor of an office building in Belgrade).

I thought that while I was here I might as well try absinthe. I actually tried it twice. A French kid from Corvinus bought a bottle and had it at the hostel. I tried a taste of it and it wasn’t really a big deal. A little strong but nothing crazy. The lady who sold it to him said that “here’s the fake stuff I sell to tourists and here is some real (and more expensive) stuff that I’ll sell to you.” That poor kid actually fell for it. The next time I tried absinthe was at the club. This absinthe was entirely different. It was probably the strongest alcohol that I have ever tasted. It burned up into my face. It was so strong. Unlike what most people think it doesn’t really make you hallucinate. It is just a strong, hard alcohol and a couple of shots of it will make you so drunk you can’t count to four.

The Journey to Prague

Getting to Prague

Today we (Samir, Danilo, Victor and I) left for Prague. We are all pretty tired because the bus left at 7am. I am really tired because I didn’t go to bed until like 2 and got up at 5:30. I really need to fix this sleep schedule. Speaking of being tired...I accidentally had booked our tickets to Prague for one week later (March 20th). Whoops. Luckily I was able to change us to be on this bus for 2,000 forints (about 8 dollars)! Our tickets for the way back were fine because we had booked two one-ways (Budapest-Prague on OrangeWays and Prague-Budapest on Volanbusz) and I didn’t book our return tickets incorrectly.

The bus was pretty nice. It’s kind of funny-they played Wedding Crashers dubbed in Hungarian with English subtitles. Great movie but I slept most of the time. The bus only made one stop (in Bratislava, Slovakia) so it made pretty good time (though we left a little late).

There were a bunch of exchange kids from Corvinus (another school here in Budapest) on the bus. Funny enough, I already knew one of them. A couple of Mondays ago at Morrisons (the bar all the exchange kids go to on Monday nights), my roommate was hanging out with all the other Brazilians and this pretty girl walks by him. He shouts out loud “GOSTOSA!” (Portuguese slang for “really hot girl”). The girl gave him a funny look and so hey said to the other Brazilians, “hey, she’s looking at me weird...” She then turned around, looked right at him and said “I’m from Brazil; I speak Portuguese!” Wow, was he embarrassed.

When we got into Prague (around 2pm) we asked the attendant at the bus station about what times the buses left for Český Krumlov. Both Kerry (the girl working at the hostel in Belgrade) and Yusuke (the Japanese kid that we met in Slovenia) highly recommended it. Supposedly it is a cool little town that has a good castle. Unfortunately, the lady working at the ticket booth told us that this was “impossible” on that day because the bus left earlier in the day. She was really mean and cranky. The people who work at the ticket booths at the Budapest train stations are really rude too so we were kind of used to this kind of behavior. I was thinking that we could spend Friday (since we only had part of a day there anyway in Český). The Brazilians didn’t seem like they really wanted to go there anyway but were willing to follow me there.

Since we didn’t know where we were going to stay we just followed the Corvinus kids to the hostel at which they had reservations. They had an open four-person room which was nice. It was called Hostel Downtown.

After finding and checking into the hostel we went to go look for some food. The Brazilians didn’t want to go to the Czech restaurant that the guy working at the hostel suggested because it was a little expensive. We ended up going to KFC. Awful decision. I felt sick and couldn’t seem to get rid of the KFC smell after washing my face and brushing my teeth. I don’t usually eat KFC in the U.S. just because it is really unhealthy but I will admit it is good. Not here though. It was like a McDonalds with chicken. It had a very simple menu (like most of the fast food restaurants here in Eastern Europe) and was chicken burgers and fries. No mashed potatoes and stuff like that.

Sightseeing

After the KFC we went sightseeing. We went to see the famous Charles Bridge since it was near the hostel. It really is a beautiful bridge but it is kind of hard to appreciate it because it is swamped with people. It’s really hard to even get a lot of good pictures while you are on it because there are really just so many people.



We then went and climbed up a hill to get a better view of the city. Unfortunately this hill was covered with trees so you really couldn’t see much. There was a mini-eiffel tower thing on the hill but it looked closed so we didn’t go up it. From things that I heard later it probably wasn’t but whatever.

We took a nap when we got back (we were still exhausted from the early bus ride) and then got some food. We were too tired to go out so we just hung around at the hostel with the Corvinus kids for a while.

I have been really bad about keeping my blog up-to date. I am going to try to be better about it. This entry (along with many others) are written after the date they happened.