Prague, Czech Republic

Jack & I trying Pilsner

The castle

Old town

The Castle

Me on the Charles Bridge

From the boat tour

On the boat tour

Wenceslas Square

If you know me, then you know how much I love to watch travel shows, anything from Anthony Bourdain to Samantha Brown, I love them all. A couple of years ago when I was in high school I was watching an episode of Rick Steve's Europe and he was in Prague, immediately I fell in love with the place (as did Rick during the episode) and knew that the next time I went to Europe that I wanted to go to Prague. After weeks of being in Geneva is looked like the trip wouldn't happen, and then one day my friend Jack and I talked about it and decided that Prague was a must, bought some plane tickets and booked a hostel and before we knew it we were off to Ceske Repbubliky.

We left on Friday afternoon with plenty of time to get to the airport, but like I've said before, and like I'll say forever, it's not traveling if something doesn't go terribly wrong at some point. That being said we hopped on the wrong train (I'll take responsibility for it) and ended up going in the opposite direction of the airport. Thank the lord that we had left in more than enough time and knew the tram and bus systems fairly well in Geneva, after running around the city and basically starting back at square one we finally got to the Geneva airport and were just in time for our flight. The first flight was just to Zurich and was fairly quick and then we caught a connecting flight to Praha and got in around 7pm at night. After taking out some Czech Kourna we found a taxi to the hostel, checked in and got settled before heading to a restaurant down the street (which would quickly become our favorite restaurant in the city) called Spirit Bar. After spending almost 3 months in Geneva where we cannot afford much other than pasta and vegetables, being able to afford eating out and eating good food was a real treat. The dinner was really different than our usual Genevan meals, it was based mostly on meat and of course we tried the Czech beer. After dinner we ended up meeting up with some fellow hostelers in the hostel's bar and then headed out to a 5 story club. One thing that I've learned so far from my travels is that if a country was under dictator control (like Spain) or in the Eastern block (like the Czech Republic) the nightlife tends to be more wild, needless to say after a few hours at the 5 story club we were pretty worn out and headed back to the hostel to catch some sleep.

The next morning we woke up bright and early to try to get tickets to an AC Sparta (Prague's main soccer team), after realizing that maybe we had been mistaken and there wasn't actually a game that day, we headed back to Wenceslas square to go on a 6 hour tour of the entire city. Our tour guide was a little Czech lady who had a, lets say, strange sense of humor, but knew a ton about Prague. We went through old town, Josefov, the castle, on a boat tour and had an included lunch all for about 1200 Koruna, around 70 dollars, more than worth it. Being able to see buildings that had been around for hundreds of years and had so much history with WWI, WWII and the Cold War was amazing. After touring the whole city we went back to Spirit bar for dinner and then headed back to the hostel to change and meet up with some people and ended up going to a Czech bar where we hung out, chatted with other travelers and drank Pilsner.

The next morning was our last day in Prague and we spent it revisiting sites like Josefov and the Charles Bridge, searching for souvenirs and drinking hot chocolate on the top of a hotel that overlooked all of old town square. We caught an early dinner at Spirit bar and then headed back to the airport to go home.

Prague was literally one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to, I'd say it's tied with Paris for my favorite place I've ever been. It was filled with amazing people, food, history, beautiful architecture and language. I fell in love with the city instantly and cannot wait to go back one day, and hopefully stay for much longer than a weekend. I am so lucky to be able to go to such an amazing place and experience such a beautiful city. I think I can easily say my trip to Praha was the best trip yet.