A funny thing happened on the way to the castle

Well this weekend has been quite the adventure. First of all let me say that it was warm!! And by warm I mean 1 degree Celsius/33.8 degree Fahrenheit. It has been in the negatives this whole week so it was absolutely wonderful to walk around with the sun out and it being warm.


Friday night I went out with Stephanie and Helen. We had a wonderful Indian meal in the food court of the Palladium (this wonderfully huge shopping mall). The food court there is nothing like I have ever seen in the States or anywhere else. It has a casino and food from all over the world and the restaurants are all decorated beautiful to fit with the cuisine…it was also nice to see a good looking guys, since they seem to be a little scarce here. He ended up being from Hungary-go figure that the one good looking man we meet isn't from Czech at all, lol. But we had a nice easy girls night out. After dinner we went to Red Room-one of my favorite bars here, it's an ExPatz bar but the live music is nice and it has good ventilation, which is super important in eastern europe where they are allowed to smoke in doors.

Saturday, I met up with Lindsey and her friend from Germany, Aunika. We set out with the intention of going to see the Prague Castle. It's in all the guide books and everyone says to see it and that it is beautiful. Well we get up there, and we thought we were looking for a castle….so we walked the grounds for a good 2 hours. Having fun, taking pictures…but the whole time trying to find this castle wondering where they could have hidden it. Well as it turns out, the castle is not so much a castle but a few buildings surround the beautiful Cathedral. One thing that is really funny about Prague is that it is a tourist city. There are twice as many tourists in a year that the population of Prague. So you think that someone would say "What can we do to make things a little easer on the tourists, since they are so nicely pumping wads of cash into our economy?" Well the answer should be 'Put signs in languages other than Czech!!'. You go to any tourist place in Prague and everyone is just confused because everything is in Czech and few people actually speak another language. They had a movie about something (I think changing of the guards) that had a Czech speaker, and Czech subtitles…I mean seriously, you go any where in America and our ATM machines are nicer to tourists than most of the Czech people here. But finally we ran into someone who spoke German. So thank God for Aunika, we were able to learn what the castle was (that its just buildings in the grounds) and that it closed at 4pm. So since it was 3:15 we decided to walk around a little more then we went to Lindsey's apartment and had a little beer tasting session and just fun hang out time. We tried 3 types of Kozel (Premium, Medium and Svetley) and Budwesier Budvar (the original Budweiser). They were interesting, it was really fun though. Budweiser is super dark here with a funny taste. My favorite was Kozel Svetley.

Around 10pm we headed out to Red Room. We met a couple, he was from England and She is from Australia. They were great to talk to, and they have been here for about 7 months so they gave us some pointers. I tried a new beer Hoegaarden. It comes in a awesomely huge glass, Toby (the brit) said we had to try them and he was right…Yummy! We also got some new glasses to add to our apartment and then travel with. Around 2 am we bid a 'due to our new friends and headed on home.

Sunday, we went back up to the castle, and being more knowledgeable did not even attempt to look for an actual castle. We bought tickets and walked through the different rooms that were on the tour. It was interesting. Nothing was really breathtaking. The main room got redecorated during every reign and after communism it really has nothing in it. The art gallery was cool. Some of the pictures were amazing and the lady working at the front door loved my Czech speaking ability (I used about a 1/3 of my vocabulary just saying hello and thank you, lol). But is was encouraging and nice to see a smile. After walking the ground for a few hours we had dinner at an Italian restaurant that Toby had told us about the night before. It is on a stationary boat on the river. It was SO good. I had spinach noodles with mushrooms and sauce, just so good.

I think that is about it. I have to do some homework before class tomorrow so I should say good night to cyber world. But closing statement: It was just an awesome weekend with new friends!

Love you all back home!

XOXO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7CjAv2ehOU