It's been a while but I finally have time to write about my Prague & Vienna adventures. I absolutely loved my travels, even though it was sort of a whirlwind trip. We (Alyssa, Colin & I) had to leave before the crack of dawn on Monday in order to get to the airport on time for our early flight. The only problem with taking the ridiculously cheap flights out of London is that their at strange times, all the airports are far-ish and the tubes don't run that early. Getting to the airport on time pretty much becomes an adventure in and of itself. But we because of our early flight we were basically at our hostel in Prague by 12:30, leaving us most of the day, so I can't really complain.
The first day we did one of the New Europe free walking tours and walked all around the old town and the Jewish quarter. I didn't know as much as I would've liked about the history of the Czech Republic (and Bohemia in general) so it was nice to get to hear about it from someone knowledgeable. I also immediately fell in love with the architecture. It was so unique to Prague and unlike the architecture anywhere else I've been. Old Town Square was beautiful, and when we went there were booths set up throughout the square selling cheese, meats, wine and other food which felt really quaint (especially compared to what we saw in Vienna). We did some shopping and grabbed food by our hostel, but were also exhausted from having been up since 3:30. Between the bad news from home and the strange hours we had to wake up I spent a lot of the trip exhausted.
Luckily we slept in (by accident) the next day. We did Prague Castle and St Vitus' Cathedral (breathtaking-- possibly my favorite place I've been on my travels), walked down Golden Lane and then wound up by the Charles River Bridge. We made wishes off of it, followed the hoards of people who would touch certain statues even though we had no clue why we were doing it, and took the obligatory action shot of Alyssa and I jumping. We also went up the clock tower at night and saw Prague all lit up. What I was amazed by was how in general the tourist attractions were the only lit up things. It was by and large a dark city at night-- definitely different from big cities in the States where everything is blaring lights. We went out to this weird Czech bar that night, U Sudu, that wound up being really fun. You went downstairs and there was a maze of rooms all playing different music and with different bars. There were people with their dogs, people rolling joints and foosball tables. Just like Blarney in Philly? Not quite.. But it wound up being really fun and I was glad we went out.
Side Note: for anyone interested in going to Prague DEFINITELY look into staying at Sir Toby's Hostel. It was great, the people were so helpful and nice and it was one of the better hostels I've been to so far.
The next morning (3 hours of sleep later) we headed off on a super cheap bus to Vienna. I loved Vienna too but it was different, and distinctly Austrian. I had been once with my Mom when I was 10 but it was fun to experience it 10 years later with a different perspective. We got bratwurst and sauerkraut, walked around the Hapsburg Palace and all of the beautiful old buildings, drank liqueur coffee at one of the famous cafes and stumbled across this strange little winter wonderland village that was set up for Christmas outside of City Hall (which looked 100% like a princess castle). We also rode the tram around the inner ring of the city and saw the buildings lit up at night, which was nice minus the part where the tram stopped, we were the only ones on it and we were slightly convinced that if we got off the tram driver would either abandon or kill us. It was a full day but it was really fun and I was glad we got a whole day in Vienna. I would've loved more time since we didn't make it to the beautiful gardens, but having been before it was okay.
Our last day we decided to get up early and since we were flying out of Bratislava we planned to go there and spend the early day there before our flights. Bratislava, by the way, is in Slovakia. Important things to know before you leave: the country in which your city is, and the language that country speaks. We got to Bratislava and all of a sudden realized we had no clue what language Slovakia spoke. Once again, my Penn education serving me well. We pulled up the wiki page and discovered that it is in fact Slovak.. duhh. Bratislava turned out to be a really cute town (city?) and there were beautiful buildings and squares, so we wandered around for the morning. It was nice, and now I can say I've been to Slovakia, so that's a plus. The only downside was I went to the airport at the same time as Alyssa and Colin, but their flight was hours before mine because they were going on to Rome and I was heading back to London to meet my parents. So I spent 9 hours in the Bratislava airport. Add that to the list of things not to do in Europe. In no particular order my activities were as follows: catching up on all my school reading, listening to Harry Potter 7 to refresh my memory for the movies, being stared at by a Slovak man for 3 hours, drinking Slovak beer that tasted vaguely like Natty Lite, drinking coffee, ordering a sandwich that looked like cat vomit, not eating the sandwich and wandering through the duty free shop for about an hour. If that doesn't look like 9 hours of activities it's because it wasn't. I also sat. A lot. All in all I can't complain though- 3 countries in 4 days and I loved all of it.
I think I might still be catching up on sleep from all of it, and I'm not actually sleeping full nights, so I'm exhausted. But that was also from trying to get up at real people times for my parents while they were here. Having them here was great, but I'll save that for a time when I haven't already written a ton of what I can only assume is mindless blather.
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