Prague!

So I just got back from Prague, Czech Republic and it was an AMAZING experience. I am so glad that I chose to go there! Jessica, Karissa and I headed out on Wednesday afternoon to Gatwick. One unfortunate even that happened was that I sat in gum in one of the trains....and I was wearing the only pair of pants that I brought for the trip. haha

Our flight was delayed a little bit so we ended up getting to Prague later than we thought we would. When we arrived it was 11 pm there, and lots of things were closed. We ended up finding the bus we needed and then getting onto the Metro, and then finding our hostel without too much trouble. We were really proud of ourselves.

We woke up the next morning and decided to head to Old Town. On the way we passed a lot of tourist shops and we saw a bunch of puppets everything in the shops. We thought this was really interesting and we want to research if maybe the story of Pinocchio originate somewhere near Prague because there were a lot of puppets of him too.

This was the view that we saw right as we came around the corner to Old Town. All the buildings have a Gothic, majestic feel to them and the architecture is amazing.
This is the famous astronomical clock. Every hour people crowd around it as little wooden figures come out of those two windows at the top It was kind of strange and I'm not really sure of the meaning but it was cool to see.
After walking around for a little bit, Jessica and I went on top of the clock tower and below is one of the pictures that I took while on top of it.
We then went on to the famous Charles Bridge, and it was really neat. There were a bunch of people on it, and there were vendors selling all sorts of things. There was even a band playing. The view was amazing, as can be seen from the picture below.
After walking a little more, we came to St. Nicholas's Cathedral. It was the most beautiful church I have ever been inside of. Mozart played concerts here, and everything was spectacular wherever you looked.


Day Two- We woke up and went to Prague Castle, which is not just one building, it's a whole little village on top of a hill. The steps to get up there were quite extensive. Touring the Castle took a long part of our day and it was really neat. The frustrating part was that because we don't speak Czech, we were not able to understand the history of a lot of what we were seeing because we did not want to spend an extra 30 dollars for the audio guide, when it cost 20 dollars to get it. The picture below is of St. Vitus's Cathedral.
In Prague, there is a whole Jewish town that is still active dating back from World War 2 when they went into hiding. There is a wall up in the town that sectioned off and hid a large part of the town, and unfortunately it did cost a lot of money to get in, so we walked around other the outsides of the town and got to see a few of the buildings, including the Jewish synagogue below. It is fascinating that Czech Republic was a communist nation and how they willingly surrendered to that lifestyle without much fight. I can only imagine how these Jews lived in so much fear. The fact that the original town still exists and that I got to walk through it was really neat.

At lunch, for dessert, Jessica and I got these amazing fruit sorbet things where the sorbet was put into the shell of the actual fruit. I got Coconut and Jessica got orange. We were really sad when they were gone.

There was some kind of weird art work on one of the hills in Prague, and the ending mark of the art was a foot. The picture shows how I feel about this.
After the weird artwork there was a pathway up this hill, called Petrin hill. It was a steep and semi long climb, but it was SO worth it for the views and on top there was a whole little tourist village. The building below was in this village.The pastries in Prague were very good. The ones we are eating below were our favorite. We don't really know what they were, it has cinnamon and sugar on it...yum. We kept going back for more.
Day 3-On Saturday before we flew out we went to the Prague zoo. We had seen all the sights that we had wanted to see in the previous two days and Jessica was super excited about, so we went. My family will probably think this is funny because they think I hate zoos. I would like to confess that I really don't, in fact this one was REALLY cool. I just don't like to be overloaded with zoo experiences everywhere we go, but I am not as opposed as you think I am. This zoo had a lot of kinds of animals that I have not ever remember seeing before. There were a lot of indoor catlike animals that lived in the dark that I had no clue what they were.
I took a picture of these birds for you mom, because I thought you would like them, they are ruby ibises. Their color was awesome.

My favorite picture at the zoo, adorable kangaroos with a beautiful Prague background.

Jessica and I with the Polar bear

These last two pictures are of when we were on top of Petrin Hill and had climbed this tower, and it's the highest viewing point in Oxford. It was INCREDIBLE!


So, this was an awesome trip. Now I have to try to catch up on sleep and homework. I go to Ireland in 2 weeks! I really can't believe its almost March. I guess time does really fly by when you are having fun, and you have stuff to look forward to all the time.

I love and miss all of you so much!