Prague
We made it to the train station in Munich with plenty of time to catch our train, but we were confused to see that it wasn’t on the departures board. The information desk told us that it was canceled and printed a different route for us to take that included two changes and took an extra two hours. We weren’t sure why the train had been canceled but we knew this new plan was our only choice, so we followed his directions and hopped on the first train which took us to Ingolstadt where we had a quick change to a train that took us to Regensburg. We had a longer wait in Regensburg before we boarded our final train which took us into Prague.
By the time we made it to Prague, it was already starting to get late so we didn’t have much time to explore. We headed over to the hostel, passing a gorgeous synagogue and lots of really cool architecture before being able to check in and drop our bags. After getting ourselves oriented and organized, we set out to find dinner before stopping by the ice cream shop next to the hotel for an amazing dessert.
We agreed that we would both benefit from sleeping in more the next morning, so we took a very slow morning before heading out to see the city. We found a very long self guided walking tour of the entire city that we decided to use as an outline for our day. We knew it was too long and included too many stops to be able to appreciate everything, so we picked which things we thought would be most interesting and cut some of the others.
The tour started at Charles Bridge which was really cool to see and even cooler to walk across. It was easy to see why it is such a famous bridge and was filled with musicians performing and artists creating and selling their work. The rest of the tourists must have agreed because the number of people there definitely matched its fame. From here, we followed the tour to the Piss statue which is a sculpture of two mechanical men peeing into the base of the fountain which is shaped like the Czech Republic. The website with our tour said that there was supposed to be a plaque with a phone number that you could text so the mechanical men would pee in the shape you requested, but we couldn’t find any plaque or phone number.
On the way to the tour’s next stop, we passed Prague’s smallest street which is a very skinny alleyway with a pedestrian light. We took a couple pictures and then headed onto the next stop. We passed under the Charles bridge and went into a park that was the home to three giant baby statues crawling around with coin slits for faces. They were very bizarre to see and the website told us that they were designed to take away some of the ugliness of the TV tower (which you could see across the river. Prague’s TV tower apparently regularly ranks very high in ugliest building lists. We wanted to take a turn to climb on the giant baby sculptures, but they were overrun by children so we decided we should leave them to it.
The next stop on the list was the John Lennon wall which was honestly pretty underwhelming and very crowded. We decided to skip ahead a bit and head toward the Prague castle after a quick stop for Chimney cakes (a local street food that is everywhere in Prague). We filled ours with fresh strawberries and topped them with ice cream which was amazing before heading over to the staircase to climb up to the castle. On our way, we passed the St Nicholas Church which has a huge green dome on top and is considered one of the most beautiful churches in Prague.
We trekked up the staircase to the Prague castle and were greeted with a beautiful view over the city and the river. It was beautiful up there and we spent a lot of time there before coming back down. On our way back down, we passed a pub and agreed that we would both benefit from a cold beer and access to their bathrooms. It was a good decision and we enjoyed sitting on their balcony sipping our beers while looking at the rest of the places we wanted to see. When we were ready to go, we headed back toward the river and stopped to see the World War II memorial before we crossed the river on a different bridge that gave us a good view of the Charles bridge.
On the other side of the bridge, we passed the Rudolphinium, a center for the arts, before making our way into the Jewish Quarter. Unfortunately, this was also when we realized that it was Saturday which meant that all of the synagogues (and almost everything else in the Jewish quarter) was closed. We were disappointed and considered pushing our train back in the morning but decided that even if we did, we wouldn’t have enough time to see it all and didn’t want to rush. Instead, we settled for seeing it all from the outside and reading up on what we were missing.
Each of the synagogues have their own style and are all gorgeous and unique (even from the outside). We also were able to get a glimpse of the cemetery which was also closed on Saturday, but would’ve been very moving to see. Outside the Spanish synagogue, the statue of Franz Kafka stands tall… well, sits tall atop a headless man in a suit. It is very deep and interesting statue that was really cool to see. It was also interesting that it was a statue that Kafka made of himself.
From the statue, we headed down Parizska street (which is like the Champs-Elysées or 5th Avenue of Prague) on our way to the old town square. The square used to be the marketplace and still houses a couple museums, lots of restaurants, and the astronomical clocktower which has been singing in the hour for the last 600 years. We wanted to see the tower go off so we wandered around nearby, peaking in some shops and people watching until it was almost time. Then, we joined the crowd waiting in the street and watched the skeleton ring it’s bell and the other figures dance. The show was less impressive than the one we had seen in Munich, but was still lots of fun and is very impressive for something that it 600 years old.
When the clock finished, we headed back toward the hostel and grabbed food at the grocery store next door for dinner. We got a good night sleep before getting up, grabbing breakfast, and heading to the train station to catch our train to Berlin.
