Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Prague

What a rush.........we got up went to the train station to reserve our seats and found out that the train going to Prague was leaving from the other station, a good 20 minutes away on the tram! Our train was leaving at 10.04am and it was now 9.10 and we hadn't even got our stuff together to go!


We dashed back to the hostel, Matt went to grab something to eat on the way as it was a 4 hour journey and I went to find out how to get to this other station. Time was being eaten up rapidly and it was now 9.40 before we checked out. We came to the conclusion that there was no point going on the tram as we didn't know when the next one was coming, we had to walk to the tram stop and it took about 20 mins...it wasn't looking too promising.


So we headed for the nearest train station in the hope to pick up a cab which would hopefully get us to the station we needed to be at in time. Trying to hurry along with a great bug lump of a bag on your back is not a pleasant experience but it had to be done. We dived in the nearest taxi and off we sped in the hope that the driver would get us there in time. Repeatably checking the time every 30 seconds didn't make any difference but I could see the time getting nearer and nearer to the wire. After darting through traffic we pulled up at the station at 10.02 which gave us 2 minutes to find out what platform the train was leaving from and get on board - I was hoping we could actually find the train and platform as a repeat experience of our last train journey would have meant we would have had to have waited for the next train which took an additional 2 hours!


Phew!!!! Our train had been delayed by 10 minutes haha, briliant! I think we would have just made it in time but I was glad for once that a train had been delayed as it gave us some breathing time.


The hostel we're staying at was fairly easy to find near the old town square, though it was now about 4.30pm and when we got the the hostel the reception was closed and didn't reopen until 5. The cleaner was there who let us offload our bags and we went to get ourselves and drink in the shade to fritter away 30 minutes. After we checked in, we had a shower and then found out where we could go to get some traditional Czech food as our stomach's were rumbling.


There are tons of little side streets in Prague, most of which don't appear on the map I have so we did walk around in a few circles before finding the street we were looking for so we could find this Czech restaurant. I went for a farmers feast which consisted of some different meats and vegetables which were wrapped in a big thick pancake, which I couldn't finish but it was really good.


In the evening we thought it was about time we tested out one of these organised pub crawls so went to the meeting point, which was a bar that served as much beer and vodka cranberry shots as you could drink in 90 minutes and also gave us a shot of absinthe on our arrival. On first impressions it seemed a bit like a moron convention, but there were actually some pretty cool people there and it turned out to be a good night.


The first bar we went to was called Coyotes, where as you can guess the bar staff got on the tables and danced like in the film Coyote Ugly which was fun. We then went to another bar where a couple of Welsh guys sat with us who were totally off their heads and were talking absolute crap. I think they must have asked me where I was from about 10 times -- after a while it got pretty annoying but was hilarious at the same time. It was then onto an underground club which was playing electro/dance music, none of which I'd ever heard but it was wikkid. The main downside was that it was boiling down there and when we came out it was raining arghhh!! All in all it was a good night and I struggled to get up in the morning.

We got up found somewhere to eat - always our first item on the agenda, where I had the most amazing desert which was cream in pancakes covered in chocolate sauce. The cream was really thick, the pancakes were really light and it was just awesome. We then thought we better see some of the sights as we were yet to explore the city so we walked over the bridge to go up a church and visit the palace which was stunning inside with huge stain glass windows and various other statues and stuff.

We have to get up early tomorrow as our train to Berlin leaves about 9.30am!! We'll make sure we don't leave it too close to the wire this time.

2 comments:

steviebaby said...

WoW Kev - it has been great so far. I feel it's a struggle to keep up just reading it all. The photos are really good. However - nothing about the toilets in any of the places so far. Do they have them in these countries? I know they do in Germany, at least they did when I was there a long, long time ago. Maybe you'll post some photos of some German loos. I bet they are technically brilliant.

magickev said...

just standard loos im afraid, sorry to dissapoint! If I come across any perculiar loos Ill be sure to let you know.