Prague, Czech Republic.

Written 26^th June 2012

We arrived in Prague along with a rather large and persistent raincloud and found our way to our hostel, warily parking on the road outside. (Wary as we had no idea what the parking rules were.) We went inside after some confusion as to where the entrance was and payed for the two nights we had booked. We then asked if we could bring our car in to park in the courtyard (we had chosen this hostel particularly because we wanted to be able to park the car there – knowing how difficult it could be to park in cities in Europe.) We were then informed that it was 20 Euro for 24 hours! This more than doubled the cost of the accommodation. We tried to find our way around it – tried to find a cheeper garage somewhere but it turned out that everywhere else was about the same! I was not in a good mood. We forked out the 20 Euro and parked the car in their garage and then sat around the hostel for the evening as it was still raining cats and dogs outside. The next morning dawned dull and gloomy. We decided anyway to go into town and do the free walking tour which was advertised on a flyer in our hostel. We had a few hours to kill first so we wandered around a bit looking at stuff. The sun decided to come out from behind the clouds and the weather became hot and nice. There was a market that had all sorts for sale. 

One had fox scarf thingies (forgotten the right word) they were so soft and silky I could almost feel the live fox under my hands. I felt so sad that they were all dead. In the same market there were lots of stalls selling berry mixes. 

We were going to get one until we realised they were being sold by the 100g and worked out to be about $10 for a tiny punnet. I was a bit disappointed. We thought Czech Republic would be cheep but it was working out no different to the rest of Europe and Prague seemed more expensive than anywhere! At 1pm we met at the clock for the walking tour. We were told the reason it was a free tour was that it worked on tips. So if you liked the tour you could leave a tip and if you didn't you didn't have to. The tour was quite good. We learnt interesting things about many of the landmarks in Prague.

The clock was particularly interesting. The bloke who built built it made it a celestial clock. On each hour the characters on the side all move and those blue windows at the top open and a whole bunch of saints rotate around. People came from all around to see it because apparently seeing it was good luck. The people who got the clock built didn't want the bloke who built it to make another one. So they had a party to celebrate how cool he was and then at the party they burnt his eyes out! So this poor bloke was blind. So a few days later he leapt into the inner workings of the clock and cursed it so it would't work for 100 years. 100 years later someone was finally found that could fix it and they got it going again.

This is our guide.

 We met two guys on the tour that were staying at our hostel. They were called Steven and Brian and were from Ireland. We ended up hanging out with them for the night which was pretty fun. First we went to watch the soccer at the fan zone and then got some tea where Brian was ripped off by another stall selling stuff by the 100g. After the game had finished we went to go on a pub crawl. The boys all got pissed and I had fun dancing the night away. 

That is Brian on the left and Steven on the right.

Steven had blue shoes so we let him join the blue shoes club.

The next morning we set off for Germany after a slightly unpleasant start to the day. This is what happened - I was already in a bit of a grumpy mood due to a late night (I never do well on a late night) and when we checked out I asked if it was okay to leave the car in the car park for an hour so we could walk into town and get breakfast and a post card. The lady that was at the front desk was the kind one that had been there when we checked in but also another lady who must have owned the place. She said we could not. I was irritated – we had payed 40 Euro to park there for 48 hours and we had checked in in the afternoon. (You could not check in there until 2 or 3pm.) I said that we had been told the parking was for 24 hour periods. The lady said that no, it finished when you checked out. That the parking would be needed for other guests. I frowned. If the other guests could not check in for at least another 3 hours then what difference would it make I though. But she was adamant. My mood worsened. Stupid woman. I now wanted to get out of Prague more than ever but wanted to get a postcard (I had forgotten to get one the day before) for my collection. So hungry and grumpy we drove on into town and got messed around on the one way roads. Steve stopped the car and suggested I just walk over to the main street and get one. He was pared on a wide foot path though so I new I had to hurry. Walking as fast as I could, jandals snapping and damp hair sticking to my face every chance it got I hurried along eyes searching for a stand of past cards. In every other tourist destination we had been to post cars are ready to poke your eye out nearly every few metres. Not in Prague. When I eventually made it to the main road I was hot, bothered, and sweaty. Post cards were alluding me. I steamed on down the road and eventually made it to a souvenir shop. Hooray! But do you know what! Not a postcard in sight. I wasted a few futile minutes searching the store myself until I finally asked the lady in the shop who said they didn't have any! What kind of souvenir shop is this? I thought! So I hurried on down the road – all the time worrying Steve would have been told to move on, or given a ticket, and then would not be able to find me. Finally on the far corner of the road I spied a news stand with what looked like a postcard stand. I hurried over to it, chose a postcard like lightning and was hurrying away buck up the street before you could say “Prague's a rip off!” I made it back to Steve and was relived to see him still sitting there in the car. To Germany and away!

We tried stopping in a small town in Czech Republic to buy some brunch before we crossed the boarder. We bought some bakery food which was so bad it was inedible. As hungry as we were that food sat next to us for a long while barely touched. Goodbye Czech Republic.