Day 4 (Prague)

Ahhh, the joy of waking up and not being in a rush to swallow down breakfast (I should really say toast as that's become the staple food provided in the morning) before carting out my freshly repacked rucksack to the bus and selecting a new seat for the day's driving. Glorious!

Even though I didn't need to be up crack of sparrow early I was up and about around 7.30am..very weird for me. I reckon there's a good chance that when I get home I'll actually get up before 9am for a change..though I imagine it wouldn't last too long! We met up with Kim and a few of the other passengers in the lobby of the hostel (Plus Prague) at 9am to get the tram into the city centre to go walkabout. There was so much chatter going on on the tram that we missed our stop, not just by one or two..but by a lot..and ended up in Suburbia at a stop not too far from the end of the line. So, off we got, crossed the track, bought new tickets and then waited for the next tram going back into town. A diversion of about 45mins, but we got to see a lot more of Prague than we would have had we got off at the right place in the first place :)

We decided to walk the sights rather than get an organised foot, bike, boat or segway tour (I really wanted to have a go on a segway, but €75 was a bit steep and the morning started out pretty rainy so I thought it might be a washout. We got off the tram at Charles Bridge and strolled across it looking at all the stalls. There were some seriously amazing photos, that I would definitely have been sucked into buying if I was on a city break, but resisted because I can't realistically carry any more than I already have. I did buy a shiny silk headscarf for Iran from a vendor who was haggling with himself rather than me..he kept dropping his price even though I wasn't saying anything. We continued up the hill and en route to the castle stopped in Starbucks for some decent coffee, the stuff in the hostel was not only cold, it was foul tasting. By the time we made it up, the changing of the guards was starting up and there were masses of people lining the square. I thought I'd got it sussed standing on a wall where I could see everything, but then one of the guards came over with his big gun and sword type thingy and ordered me down..I wasn't about to argue! There was a big fanfare about it, but it wasn't anything spectacular that I could see (though my view was pretty poor).

We all split off into little splinter groups at that stage and Loonie and I headed off to explore out the back of the castle. On our way down the hill we stopped off in St. Wenceslas' Vineyard to sample the local cuisine. Loonie had the cheese plate, all of which went down well with the exception of one piece that in her words 'tasted like a lump of goat'. I went for the Czech sausage with cabbage (lettuce) and bread, which was delicious. I washed it down with a glass of Rose from the vineyard which was also pretty good. It was a delightful way to spend an afternoon, so relaxing to sit and watch the world go by..so much better than rushing down a sandwich in 15mins and heading back to my desk because the seat needs to be vacated for the next person to come along.

After lunch we stumbled upon a toy museum so paid to go have a look. It was good, but the one in Malmo was better in my opinion. From there we walked on toward the river and found some kids playground equipment so had a bit of fun taking pictures and videos there. By complete fluke we found the smallest street in Prague – it's so narrow that there are traffic lights on it that you need to activate at the bottom if you want to walk up it. We eventually made our way back to the Charles Bridge and crossed over to go in search of the Astronomical Clock where we were meeting the group for dinner at 6.45pm. We were going au natural with no map and just our cunning sense of direction to guide us..that didn't work out completely well, but we made a good attempt! We got to the square where we reckoned the clock was but couldn't see sight nor sound of it. We looked up at every building but it wasn't to be found, so we headed into the tourist office to ask about it. It would appear that the clock isn't at the top of the building, but rather on the side of it so looking skyward was useless to us. We watched the 6pm event at it and I have to admit it was rather disappointing..I expected something astronomical and it definitely wasn't!

While we waited for the full gang to arrive we had a beer, the unfortunate thing was that it was lemon flavoured which as first was refreshing, but it soon turned gross! For dinner Kim had gotten us 20% off at a Czech restaurant just off the square. We arrived and the 14 of us were squished around the table and got our menus. The waiter was possibly the most sour looking waiter I've ever had. He wasn't particularly helpful. We asked about splitting the bill into two groups rather than having to try work out what everyone owed off a bill for 14 - not possible. We asked about the dishes to make sure that we'd get what we expected if we ordered what we thought we liked the sound of and instead of answering the questions he just kept saying to read the menu, very annoying! When the food came out it looked pretty good, mine was pretty tasty, the only issue I had was finding a hair in it, and pretty grossly because I was so hungry it didn't stop me from eating a large percentage of it. Alex also had a hair in his and Mel had an issue with grizzle or something from the meat getting stuck in her teeth. Everyone else seemed pretty ok with their dish. When the bill arrived the guy had written down figures on two pages – but there was no description to say what the numbers were for! Kim asked him to give her some info on how he'd put it together..but he was too busy with his customers to help (are we purple? were we not customers?). So she went to everyone to work out how much theirs was to be and what the figure was minus the 20% discount. We were shy by a good bit and it was only when we said we'd paid for everything we had and we weren't paying the rest that he offered to help analyse the bill. There was a cover charge per person that had to be added on. We left a wad of cash and a mountain of coins which he insisted on counting out while we waited. So a very eventful dinner!

We got the tram back to the hostel and started packing for tomorrow's journey to Vienna..Austria here we come!

Photos from Prague are here: