Prague-tastic!
Ah, the narrative. The story began last Thursday, when I took the Stansted Express out to the airport. I was a bit nervous, as security was packed, but I made it through, milled about, and headed over to the gate. I kept texting back and forth with Jeanyne, who was stuck in traffic but made it about 20 minutes before boarding. Lucky me, the crazy group of Indian guys who were waaaaaaaaaay too into clubbing thought I looked cute and decided to try and get me to agree to go to some club in Prague. Thank God they were on the easyjet flight and not our Czech Air flight, because that would have gotten OLD, damn.
Where was Liz?
It turns out that while being a good student and not skipping her class may have helped her grade, it didn't so much help her make the flight. Her journey on the Stansted Express turned out to be more like a trip on the two-mile-an-hour train to nowhere, and she missed both our flight and the flight from Heathrow that Wynnie, Annette and Justin took. Luckily, she made it the next day, but it definitely sucked that she missed the fun of finding our way around on that first night.
So we got to Prague and immediately tried to figure out how to get to our hotel. In a lovely twist of "not so coolness," the moment that we walked up to the bus ticket booth was the moment the ticket guy decided that it was closing time. We did, however, manage to find the outside ticket machine, where we bought our 20 crown tickets into the city (basically the equivalent of an 80-cent trip to the center of town - awesome). So we made it to the hotel and were happily surprised to find that there actually WERE three beds in the triple room, and they were lovely! We jumped around and acted like dorks for a few hours (it involved me declaring that I felt like I was taking crazy pills (relative to a situation, not in general - though it's not out of the question)), and were eagerly awaiting the latter group's arrival (and, at the time, were hoping that Liz would have caught up with them). Thanks to Prague's proximity to Germany, we caught Law & Order in German, then some Family Guy and Golden Girls. It's always better when you can't really understand the words but you totally know what's happening in the show.
The next morning, we met up with the other three at the buffet breakfast (and by the way, Justin was totally not in the origina plans to come, but the first night I had been thinking "wow, it would be extra fun if he was here, because he has the same idiot sense of humor that we do!" And then I turned around at breakfast and nearly ran into him, and it was one of those really strange moments, but just for me. Heh). Yay buffet; we didn't have to eat until 3 in the afternoon! We walked to the center of town and wandered around Old Town Square and (what we later found out was) the Jewish Quarter, both of which were lovely. We managed to get ahold of Liz, who made it into town by noon, and we all agreed to meet at one of the eight MILLION McDonald's in the center of town. While we were killing time, we managed to make it to H&M, an open-air market that sold oplotky (holy-looking wafers which have hastened my descent into hell, because they're just so fun to play with!), the Church of St. Giles, case the town for absinthe (which, apparently, you can't get the real stuff unless you go to Turkey), make fun of street signs that were FAR too descriptive, and walk by the Parliament House, where I swear to God, Tony Blair was walking out of when we were there. It was quite odd. After, Jeanyne bought a marionette that creeped me out a little, so it's damn good that she didn't decide to prop it up next to me while I was sleeping or something.
*Important to people from TASA - in the tourist shop next to the marionette store, we were examining the touristy paraphernalia they were selling. I was kind of bouncing along to the music, when I realized I knew the words! And they went something like "you're my heart, you're my soul..." At that moment, I knew Prague was the best city ever, because they were TOTALLY playing some badass Modern Talking, and the guys in the store were singing ALONG to the music! I mean, so was I, but it was completely meant to be ironic. They? Loved it. Ah, falsetto music, it was so fabulous! And yes, I felt kind of like an idiot for recognizing it in about .2862 seconds, but what are you gonna do.
So we met Liz and went to a Czech pub/restaurant/microbrewery. The food? Filling as hell, and damn tasty too. I have to say, this was the only vacation I've ever gone on where my stomach hurt after every meal, simply because they were that surprisingly filling. But oh, schnitzel, my love. It was so tasty.
I have to say, besides the main town and its environs, we really didn't do anything spectacularly touristy. Saturday also included more walking around Old Town, but that was after we visited Prague Castle. It was gigantic, and as we were entering, the President was leaving. We have a thing about politicians, I guess.
The tour was nice; it was interesting to see a castle that managed to survive for so long. Of course, the moment we left and started walking across Charles Bridge, the sky opened up in some sort of sleety wonderfulness. Ick. That only made us walk faster to another restaurant that Wynnie had picked out of her "Let's Go," and I have to say, the book did not let us down. We made it out to a bar after that, where we met a Czech guy and his friend, an American who was teaching English in Prague for the semester (or so; his plans sounded kind of vague). They had fun attempting to teach me how to say numbers in Czech (and "three" is SO hard to pronounce. I suck). They hung around for a while, and after they left we were having fun enjoying the Bjork that was on continuous play and just drinking the hideously cheap beer.
We left the bar and immediately noticed that it had snowed about two inches since we'd been in the bar. Thinking that it might snow a lot more, and that I was already kind of drunk, we decided to make the general decision that we would not, unfortunately, be making the trip to Kutna Hora to see the Ossuary (google it, it's pretty cool). Our prediction was correct, though - the next morning, there were at least six inches of powder covering anything, which gave us a fabulous excuse to sleep in and be lazy.
Once we did venture out, the snow seemed to make everything a bit calmer and more peaceful. We met up with everyone at the same McDonalds (I think they knew our faces by the end of the weekend) and hustled over to the Museum of Communism, which was very much worth the entry fee. I only regret that the gift shop didn't have a copy of the poster that was advertising the museum, because I enjoyed it far too much.
The day concluded with some shopping, wandering, and dinner at an Italian-Czech place (yeah, I don't know) that seemed much more authentic and frequented by the locals than the other places had. Of course we couldn't go the whole trip without some crazy, and that was the cue for some weird Australian guy to ask Wynnie, Annette and Justin whether they were Japanese or Korean (answer: none of the above); after basically getting iced out of the conversation, he came back as we were being served our meals to ask Wynnie what state she was from (again, barking up the wrong tree. Good thing she's Canadian); after that, it was his third swing and a miss as he finally found out she's engaged. He tried to get it going with me by asking who else at the table was taken when I was the only other girl sitting there, but Justin became my knight in a shining "I Love the Phillippines" t-shirt when he said that we were engaged. Heh. You probably have to know him and experience the Justin to see why it's so funny, but it totally WAS, and we totally fooled the guy. Awesome.
We made it back to the hotel to pack up and get ready for the early rise tomorrow morning, which we managed to do while watching sumo wrestling. Again, I don't know. We did, magically, somehow all get moving by 5am the next morning, in time for Jeanyne, Liz and I to start praying furiously in our taxi that we wouldn't die. Dude was driving FAST. Of course we survived, made it to the airport, checked in, and sat for a half hour before finding out that the flight was delayed until 8:30. The others were worried about missing class; I was pissed that we could have so clearly slept for at least another hour.
Finally, FINALLY we made it on the plane. The takeoff was ... different, but the flight was generally fine until landing time came. It was one of those moments where I was thinking "I don't know WHY we're still going left to right, but we are. A LOT. And the runway is RIGHT FUCKING THERE." Sooooo, yeah - it was not the best landing ever, but we're here. And Jeanyne made me feel more sane when she was like "yeah, I don't normally get nervous, but that was different." She also informed me that it was a good thing I wasn't looking out the window during takeoff, as we were apparently inches away from the grass. Lovely.
But yes - it was a fantastic trip, lovely weather at the beginning, entertaining weather at the end, and enough cheap beer to keep me happy for a while!
Where was Liz?
It turns out that while being a good student and not skipping her class may have helped her grade, it didn't so much help her make the flight. Her journey on the Stansted Express turned out to be more like a trip on the two-mile-an-hour train to nowhere, and she missed both our flight and the flight from Heathrow that Wynnie, Annette and Justin took. Luckily, she made it the next day, but it definitely sucked that she missed the fun of finding our way around on that first night.
So we got to Prague and immediately tried to figure out how to get to our hotel. In a lovely twist of "not so coolness," the moment that we walked up to the bus ticket booth was the moment the ticket guy decided that it was closing time. We did, however, manage to find the outside ticket machine, where we bought our 20 crown tickets into the city (basically the equivalent of an 80-cent trip to the center of town - awesome). So we made it to the hotel and were happily surprised to find that there actually WERE three beds in the triple room, and they were lovely! We jumped around and acted like dorks for a few hours (it involved me declaring that I felt like I was taking crazy pills (relative to a situation, not in general - though it's not out of the question)), and were eagerly awaiting the latter group's arrival (and, at the time, were hoping that Liz would have caught up with them). Thanks to Prague's proximity to Germany, we caught Law & Order in German, then some Family Guy and Golden Girls. It's always better when you can't really understand the words but you totally know what's happening in the show.
The next morning, we met up with the other three at the buffet breakfast (and by the way, Justin was totally not in the origina plans to come, but the first night I had been thinking "wow, it would be extra fun if he was here, because he has the same idiot sense of humor that we do!" And then I turned around at breakfast and nearly ran into him, and it was one of those really strange moments, but just for me. Heh). Yay buffet; we didn't have to eat until 3 in the afternoon! We walked to the center of town and wandered around Old Town Square and (what we later found out was) the Jewish Quarter, both of which were lovely. We managed to get ahold of Liz, who made it into town by noon, and we all agreed to meet at one of the eight MILLION McDonald's in the center of town. While we were killing time, we managed to make it to H&M, an open-air market that sold oplotky (holy-looking wafers which have hastened my descent into hell, because they're just so fun to play with!), the Church of St. Giles, case the town for absinthe (which, apparently, you can't get the real stuff unless you go to Turkey), make fun of street signs that were FAR too descriptive, and walk by the Parliament House, where I swear to God, Tony Blair was walking out of when we were there. It was quite odd. After, Jeanyne bought a marionette that creeped me out a little, so it's damn good that she didn't decide to prop it up next to me while I was sleeping or something.
*Important to people from TASA - in the tourist shop next to the marionette store, we were examining the touristy paraphernalia they were selling. I was kind of bouncing along to the music, when I realized I knew the words! And they went something like "you're my heart, you're my soul..." At that moment, I knew Prague was the best city ever, because they were TOTALLY playing some badass Modern Talking, and the guys in the store were singing ALONG to the music! I mean, so was I, but it was completely meant to be ironic. They? Loved it. Ah, falsetto music, it was so fabulous! And yes, I felt kind of like an idiot for recognizing it in about .2862 seconds, but what are you gonna do.
So we met Liz and went to a Czech pub/restaurant/microbrewery. The food? Filling as hell, and damn tasty too. I have to say, this was the only vacation I've ever gone on where my stomach hurt after every meal, simply because they were that surprisingly filling. But oh, schnitzel, my love. It was so tasty.
I have to say, besides the main town and its environs, we really didn't do anything spectacularly touristy. Saturday also included more walking around Old Town, but that was after we visited Prague Castle. It was gigantic, and as we were entering, the President was leaving. We have a thing about politicians, I guess.
The tour was nice; it was interesting to see a castle that managed to survive for so long. Of course, the moment we left and started walking across Charles Bridge, the sky opened up in some sort of sleety wonderfulness. Ick. That only made us walk faster to another restaurant that Wynnie had picked out of her "Let's Go," and I have to say, the book did not let us down. We made it out to a bar after that, where we met a Czech guy and his friend, an American who was teaching English in Prague for the semester (or so; his plans sounded kind of vague). They had fun attempting to teach me how to say numbers in Czech (and "three" is SO hard to pronounce. I suck). They hung around for a while, and after they left we were having fun enjoying the Bjork that was on continuous play and just drinking the hideously cheap beer.
We left the bar and immediately noticed that it had snowed about two inches since we'd been in the bar. Thinking that it might snow a lot more, and that I was already kind of drunk, we decided to make the general decision that we would not, unfortunately, be making the trip to Kutna Hora to see the Ossuary (google it, it's pretty cool). Our prediction was correct, though - the next morning, there were at least six inches of powder covering anything, which gave us a fabulous excuse to sleep in and be lazy.
Once we did venture out, the snow seemed to make everything a bit calmer and more peaceful. We met up with everyone at the same McDonalds (I think they knew our faces by the end of the weekend) and hustled over to the Museum of Communism, which was very much worth the entry fee. I only regret that the gift shop didn't have a copy of the poster that was advertising the museum, because I enjoyed it far too much.
The day concluded with some shopping, wandering, and dinner at an Italian-Czech place (yeah, I don't know) that seemed much more authentic and frequented by the locals than the other places had. Of course we couldn't go the whole trip without some crazy, and that was the cue for some weird Australian guy to ask Wynnie, Annette and Justin whether they were Japanese or Korean (answer: none of the above); after basically getting iced out of the conversation, he came back as we were being served our meals to ask Wynnie what state she was from (again, barking up the wrong tree. Good thing she's Canadian); after that, it was his third swing and a miss as he finally found out she's engaged. He tried to get it going with me by asking who else at the table was taken when I was the only other girl sitting there, but Justin became my knight in a shining "I Love the Phillippines" t-shirt when he said that we were engaged. Heh. You probably have to know him and experience the Justin to see why it's so funny, but it totally WAS, and we totally fooled the guy. Awesome.
We made it back to the hotel to pack up and get ready for the early rise tomorrow morning, which we managed to do while watching sumo wrestling. Again, I don't know. We did, magically, somehow all get moving by 5am the next morning, in time for Jeanyne, Liz and I to start praying furiously in our taxi that we wouldn't die. Dude was driving FAST. Of course we survived, made it to the airport, checked in, and sat for a half hour before finding out that the flight was delayed until 8:30. The others were worried about missing class; I was pissed that we could have so clearly slept for at least another hour.
Finally, FINALLY we made it on the plane. The takeoff was ... different, but the flight was generally fine until landing time came. It was one of those moments where I was thinking "I don't know WHY we're still going left to right, but we are. A LOT. And the runway is RIGHT FUCKING THERE." Sooooo, yeah - it was not the best landing ever, but we're here. And Jeanyne made me feel more sane when she was like "yeah, I don't normally get nervous, but that was different." She also informed me that it was a good thing I wasn't looking out the window during takeoff, as we were apparently inches away from the grass. Lovely.
But yes - it was a fantastic trip, lovely weather at the beginning, entertaining weather at the end, and enough cheap beer to keep me happy for a while!
posted by Teri at 12:33 PM
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