Czech it out!

Helloooo all! Almost 3 weeks ago now Meghan and I packed our bags to go to on our Europe trip.  On April 10th we caught a bus to Dublin at 4am.  At 10:30am we boarded our three hour Aer Lingus flight to Prague.

The Czech Republic is not on the Euro so Meghan and I exchanged some money into Koruny.  The currency has really high units.  Don't be fooled by this picture, each of these bills is about $27. If only these were bills from the US!

After we landed we took a bus into the city.  We checked into the Old Town Hostel right in the middle of Prague.  After dropping off our stuff we went walking around.  Prague had a week long Easter festival that was still going on so there were a ton of craft vendors, food vendors, and a big stage set up for dancers and singers!  Here are pictures of the Old Town Square.

One of the first things that we did was climb to the top of the Astronomical Clock in the Old Town Square.  The view out of this clock tower was amazing! It was a beautiful day and we were able to see the whole city!  

After climbing back down to the bottom we went for dinner and drinks.  Pilsner as some of you know is the popular Czech beer. The traditional dish in the Czech Republic is goulash.  Both were delicious!

The next morning Meghan and I woke up early for a segway tour of Prague. When walking to the segway office we walked on the famous St. Charles bridge over the Vltava River.  We passed over it early enough where there weren't a lot of tourists and got some great photos! We also passed the United States embassy.  There was a Czech police man on every corner surrounding the embassy.  If any car drove down the road in front of the embassy, their car got searched and looked at underneath with mirrors.  It was pretty entertaining to watch.  We didn't see anything like this in front of any of the other embassys that we saw that day.

Meghan and I went on a 1.5 hour segway tour.  It was just me, Meghan, and our tour guide Adele.  Adele was so nice and told us a lot of interesting things around the city!  Meghan and I got the hang of segwaying pretty quick once we had a few practice loops around the side street. The tour was early so there weren't many people on the sidewalks, good thing!

After the segway tour we made our way up to Prague Castle.  The Prague Castle has the largest castle grounds than any other castle in the world.  

This is a picture of St. Vitus's Cathedral inside the castle grounds.  When looking at the outside, it was the most ridiculous church I have ever seen.  It was so different from any other Irish church that we have seen!

After the castle we made our way to the Strahov Monestary for a beautiful view of the city!  The monks at this monestary brew beer! We couldn't help ourselves and had to try a pint of Pivovar Matuska. It was pretty good!

After the monastery we walked around Petrin Park, had a couple more beers at a pub down on the river, and then took advantage of some great mexican food at The Cantina.  That night Meghan and I went on a pub crawl.  After 2.5 hours of unlimited beer, wine, vodka, rum, and absinth you can imagine that there aren't any blog worthy pictures.

On Thursday morning we walked around a part of the city called New Town.  We walked around Wenseslas square.  

I tried a traditional Czech pastry from the stall shown below.  It was a thin pasty rolled around a hot iron tube to cook and then rolled in cinnamon sugar.  As you can imagine, it was delicious!

On Thursday night Meghan and I went to a Cuban dance club that was recommended by Adele, our segway tour guide.  We had a couple mojitos and then headed back to the hostel.  The next morning we headed back to the airport. Destination Paris!

Prague has been one of my favorite cities that I have visited.  All of the buildings were so old, restored well, and the streets were all cobblestone.  It was so beautiful! Meghan and I felt like we were walking around in a different century almost.  We also enjoyed that weren't a lot of American tourists around.  Although most people spoke Czech, the Czech workers knew enough for us to get by!  I'll definitely be making my way back to Prague at some point in my life.