Prague Part I - Saturday Morning

We went to Prague this weekend. It was great. We stayed one night and was able to see a lot of the city. It was really hot the whole weekend. Too hot but at least it wasn't freezing and raining.

Saturday morning. We got up at 5am to catch the train to Prague. We get to Berlin Haufbahnhof with lots of time to spare. Jingwen got breakfast and we walked to our platform. There were lots of families and young people with backpacks. The train we took goes to Dresden, Prague, and finally Budapest. It's a lot faster (stops less) than the train we took to go to Dresden but unfortunately it was late. By 30 minutes. It was a nice train ride though since the train wasn't crowded at all. Jingwen and I got a whole cabin (6 seats) to ourselves.

The ride was nice. After we got to Dresden, the scenary got better. We rode along a river and there were hills and mountains on the other side. We saw lots of castles and forts. So it was good except for border control. They hardly looked at my passport and stamped it. They gave Jingwen a hard time though. She has a Chinese passport and a visa for Shengen countries. But the Czech Republic won't ratify the Shengen agreement until the end of this year. After we showed them our train ticket back to Berlin, they stamped her passport with a "in transit" note which gives her 5 days in the Czech Republic.

When we finally got to the Czech Republic, we changed some money at the train station. We should've changed less since it was a really bad exchange rate and they charged commission. 1 Euro is worth 28 Czech Crowns. But we weren't able to find this rate anywhere. The best we got during our whole trip was 27.60 and no commission. We took the local trains (which was pretty nice, modern, and comfortable) to our hostel. We found it pretty easily. Our accommodations were okay. Not much to complain about.

We walked around the neighborhood and gawked at the cheap prices. We ate lunch at a local restaurant. They had menus in English and the waiter spoke English pretty well. Fish was the least expensive thing on the menu, surprisingly. We got a fried bass and asparagus and shared the two dishes. We had Czech beers too, not that I knew how to enjoy it. The meal came out to be around 200 Crowns (about 8 Euros). Pretty good, I think.

We took the train to the tourist part of town. The trains there are really deep underground. The escalator went really, really fast. I had to jump on! Jingwen said tha the trains in Vienna are like that too. We're not sure why but probably so that people up above doesn't feel or hear the trains.

We got out at the Muzeum stop. We didn't have a good map so we didn't know where anything was. We wondered around and passed by the New Town Square. After much wandering, we finally found the river and saw the famous Charles Bridge in the distance. It was amazingly hot out.

We walked to the Charles Bridge and went up the watch tower. Worthy investment since we got a really nice view of the city and finally found out where Prague Castle was. The city is very pretty. There are not many modern looking buildings about. All red roofs and highly decorated fronts. We were also able to get some nice, inexpensive postcards. I also got a really nice map of the city center with all the houses and churches drawn in.

We then walked across the Charles Bridge, which is a pedestrian bridge. There were lots of vendors selling really nice paintings and pictures of the city. Everything around here was pretty expensive. About the same prices as tourist places around Berlin. There were lots of Russian dolls on sale and Jingwen got a set. They were all very pretty but we weren't allowed to take any pictures.