City #1: Prague!

The first thing we see when we get into Prague at 8 in the morning, after a long, sleepless bus ride where my butt was actually in pain and it was freezing, is this building. The Dancing House! Its by an American architect that I learned about a couple of semesters ago and actually wrote a paper about one of his buildings. This one is supposed to resemble two people dancing, the curvy side is the girl in a dress and the other is the guy. Its right by our hostel, so I end up getting to see it a lot. Prague is beautiful, the eastern europe architecture is so different from Italy, its actually really nice to have a change in scenery.
Our Hostel is really nice. Not what I was expecting at all. Its bunk beds, but comfier than the ones in the apartement (some people in the group actually end up stealing the pillows). The bathroom has heated floors and a walk in shower, with one of those shower heads that is supposed to feel like rain, and comes straightdown. Its funny how little things like that actually seem to matter on a trip.
Anyway, we skip out on the walking tour to meet up with Neil! We meet at the astronomical clock, this famous clock from the 15th century. It was so nice to see him, I forgot how much I miss my friends. We walked around for a bit, went across this famous bridge, the Charles bridge. And we went to a famous castle, thats not actually a castle, but a palace. No one lives there anymore i think but they had guards outside, kinda like how they have those guards in london. We went to this beautiful cathedral (see below). It was filled with beautiful, colorful stained glass. It was so elegant, and different from the older basilica churches we've been seeing in Italy.

 

After we went to this monastary and ate at typical czech restaurant. I had fried cheese, which is one if their specialties. It was good, but was a lot of cheese. I guess its not that much different from fried mozzarella. Then we went to neil's dorm. Which wasn't very nice. made me really glad to be living in an apartment. But the nice thing about the dorms is that all his friends were on the same floor. We got to meet some of them, they were nice, kind hipstery. One girl was from new paltz and I only recognized her from her "fuck you keep moving" tattoo on her back! Neil's favorite friend came out with us again to help give us a tour of prague. We walked to and up petrin hill to this observation tower on the top. It was so fall like, and there were beautiful views of prague the whole way up. This statue was along one of the paths and made me miss you instantly.

 The observation tower was supposed to resemble the effiel tower, but it didnt really. So many steps to the top. but the view was worth it. Prague is so pretty with all the bridges, and pointy towers, and copper green roofs. Petrin Hill is kinda like a big park and it had this amazing playground. This thing I climbed to the top of was all these ropes tied together.

The we walked down along the river. Prague has all these crazy contemporary statues scattered all over it. There was this one artist who made statutes of huge babies, it would probably scare you. He put them on this tv tower and you can see them climbing it from miles away, they look like monsters. There was another sculpture piece of these yellow plastic penguins that light up at night. We walked to the jewish quarter, which is really historical. Jews started living there centuries ago. There is this old jewish cementary that has thousands of gravestones, all crowded together. There is this story from there that this Rabbi that used to live in the quarter created this creature called Golum to protect the jews from the progroms, and other persecution. But the Golam creature got out of hand and he couldn't control him. And now the golam is hiding in the old new synagogue, that is still in the quarter today. We couldnt go in to the synaogue though cause it was closed.
We decided to go to this mexican restauraunt for dinner. I get nachos and they are so good. No more italian food! Its a cute little place and our waitress is really nice.
Marty and I meet up with neil later and go over to his Irish friends apartment and hang out with all his friends. Its cool to meet people from different places. These german guys from a floor below try to join the party but no one likes them, or even really talk to them so they leave after half an hour. After hanging out, and drinking, we got to this club called Duplex. They are actually playing good music, even hip hop. So its good dancing, and no creepy italian guys are trying to creep up on us, which makes it even nicer. Are bus2alps group is there too which is funny. The coat check takes forever! And neil is so drunk i get kinda worried im never going to see my jacket again, cause he is the giving them to the coat check. (find out the next day that some of neil's friends did have their jackets stolen!) But it works out fine in the end for us. When we leave we stop off at this fast food stand thing and i get a fried cheese sandwich. too much fried cheese!!! im sick of it by the time im done with the sandwich. After talking to you you (yea!) we dont get to bed til 4:30 in the morning! but im not even tired in the morning cause im so excited for another day in prague!