Once we got into the city, we found our hostel - Old Prague Hostel - located in Staré Město (the old town). We got settled in and had our first delicious Czech beers! I learned on the trip that Czechs are the number one consumers of beer in the world. I forget the amount that the average Czech consumes per year, but it was a pretty large quantity.
The next day, we got up and headed to the Old Town Square, which was also an Easter market with great food, and even some sheep to pet. We met the Sandeman's New Prague free walking tour here and then went with that tour for the next three hours or so. The tour was awesome and really showed us a lot of the city and taught us a lot about its history. We started in the square and learned about the famous Astronomical Clock.
Later, we went to Wenceslas Square, the Jewish Quarter, a few churches, and some different statues and monuments. Unlike many cities in that part of Europe, Prague only lost a few buildings during WWII, so much of the Old Town consists of the original buildings from hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Interestingly, we learned that one of the reasons Prague was not damaged much during the war is because Hitler really liked the city and tried to steer fighting away from it to protect it.
Our guide from the free tour was doing another tour in the afternoon of Prague Castle and Malá Strana (the district of the city on the other side of the Vltava River where the castle is located). So we just kept on going with the touring. The castle isn't like a castle in the sense you picture it, it's more of a large complex with a bunch of different types of buildings. We also saw the Basilica, to old secret police headquarters from the communist era, and some really incredible views of the city. After the tour finished, we went to a local monastery/brewery and sampled some of their merchandise!
That night we did one of the many pub crawls they have to offer in Prague, and it was a great time. That's all I have to say about that ;)
On Friday morning (our last full day in Prague) we started at our favorite restaurant of the city, Bohemia Bagel (I didn't realize how much I missed bagels until we went there). Then we went to the Jewish Quarter. We went into the Jewish Museum. One of the main parts of the museum is an old synagogue where the walls are covered in the names of Jews from Prague and the surrounding areas that suffered during WWII. It was really interesting even just to see the sheer number of names. I saw some Schneider's on the wall, and some of my friends also saw last names of family members.
Another room of the museum holds drawings that were made by the children who were in Terazín, a concentration camp outside of Prague where many of the more prominent Jews were sent. A woman who was an artist gave the children there drawing lessons and did art therapy with them. She hid the drawings before she was killed, and now they are on display in the museum.
After the Jewish Museum, we crossed the Charles Bridge (which was so crowded it took about 25 minutes to cross) and went to the John Lennon wall. There was some really cool graffiti on it, and some really stupid graffiti. Some people put things on there that don't at all represent the spirit of what the wall is supposed to represent.
All in all I really loved Prague. It looks different than other European cities I have visited because it sort of has elements of all of them thrown into one. The architecture of the Old Town was really beautiful, and sometimes it felt like you should be walking around in the Middle Ages because of the small cobbled streets and the look of the buildings. It was definitely my favorite city of this trip, and one of my favorite cities, period. I would definitely like to go back again and explore more of it than what I was able to see this time!
Friday morning I'm off to Morocco until Sunday night and then Tuesday morning I leave for Malta, so look for those posts coming up soon! As well as about Semana Santa and Feria in Sevilla! Lots to do!
