Monday July 23, 2007

After getting up early to hike down the 6 flights of stairs from our room to the reception area we successfully checked out and got back our key deposit and headed for the s-bahn station so we could catch a metro to the main train station. I had an interesting time getting my Prague Excursion pass validated at the station because I had two people telling me one thing and another person telling me another. I ended up not getting it validated at all so I just waited to see what happened on the train and it turns out that it wasn’t a problem at all. Getting our luggage up into the racks in our compartment was a bit of a task because they are big and heavy. Tasha and I worked together although it was difficult and then a man in our compartment helped us, which was really good. There were a lot of really nice towns to see along the way from Berlin to Prague. Prague from the train looks okay, but once you get off and get out its a different story. There is a lot of development going on in the Czech Republic that isn’t quite visible, but is there to make it a better place. It seemed as though there was a mob of people by the doors to get in the train as we were getting out. That was nerve-wracking because you fear the worst, that you will be pick pocketed. We were smart though and locked our bags before getting off the train so we just had some issues with people yelling at us as we pushed our way through but there just was no other way. We followed the directions that the hostel gave us to get to their place, but they told us the wrong way on the tram so we had to get off and get on a different one, but eventually we found what we were looking for. Sir Toby’s was really nice looking. We sat in the kitchen of the missing spoons while we waited to a few people to check out before we could check into our room. After checking in and taking the lift (elevator) to our room we packed our bags for the day and headed out to the center of Prague, where we visited the castle, a garden, the Charles Bridge, John Lennon Wall, museum of Torture instruments, and many gift shops. We saw a lot more than we had anticipated seeing, which was good because we are only in Prague for a day and a half. We ate dinner while in the center of town. Tasha and I thought it would be good to try some Czech food so I had dumplings stuffed with pork and purple cabbage and Tasha had beef Goulash with steamed bread. The food was quite salty and after eating half of our food we were both quite stuffed. We headed home shortly after eating and checking out a couple different gift shops and watching the sunset in the background of the castle.