To begin my second try at a journal entry for Prague, it was an incredibly beautiful city, and Kyle and I had a great time. there isn't a whole whole lot of touristy things that you have to do, and so with four days there we were able to easily see everything, and still have enough time to relax, look around us, and appreciate the atmosphere of the city. I personally was loving travelling with someone else, too. It was such a novelty after having spent six weeks by myself, and it made the experience even better. We were able to go out at night, to the numerous cocktail bars-which-are-also-karaoke-bars. I of course did not karaoke myself, but I have a newfound appreciation for how embarrassing it can be. The "performers" in these bars basically alternated between Czech people singing songs in czech, and tourists singing songs in english ("take me home, country roads" and "unchained melody" were among the fine selections enthusiastically performed by the british guys at the table next to us). Our hostel was cheap and conveniently located, which was nice, but we were rooming with about 8 guys from the british army who were on "holiday," which was not nice (read: 8 loud british guys coming in at 6:00 every morning, yapping all day in loud british accents...) Another great thing about Prague is how relatively inexpensive everything is, despite the fact that I have heard that prices are inflated from what they used to be, with the increase in tourism. Plus, there are 25 czech crowns/$1, so the prices of things make no real sense unless you calculate the difference -- and it's often not worth it, because you usually just come up with an absurdly low price -- and as a result we spent our crowns like we were kings or something. "do you want one scoop or two?" "two, and I'd like syrup as well!" Prague is oriented straddling the river Vltava, and the districts on both sides are equally historic and beautiful. One one side is the Old Town (Stare Mesto), with cool colorful buildings (strikingly different looking architecture, too -- more eastern or something), lots of restaurants, shops, etc. There is the Old Town Square, where lots of people sit all the time on the ground, benches, at sidewalk cafes. More than once we got a coke and went and just sat on the ground and watched everyone coming and going. Wenceslas Square (more of a boulevard) is the busiest street on this side of the river, and is known for its high proportion of casinos, currency exchange shops, trendy hotels, and pickpockets. For me the most fascinating thing on the old town side of the river was the jewish quarter (Josefov). To visit the jewish quarter in depth you buy a pass to the jewish "museum," which is not so much a cohesive museum as a collection of synagogues, cemetaries, little museums, etc, that you can get into by showing them your ticket. The coolest thing was the Old Jewish cemetary, which has been around for roughly forever. To deal with a lack of space and overcrowding, when the cemetary would fill up, they would simply cover it with a new level of dirt and start over again. As a result, the current cemetary (in which no one has been buried for over two hundred years) is nine layers thick, and has a strange, mounded look. Also, with each progressive layer the gravestones from the lower levels were brought up to the top, so the cemetary is teeming with crooked old tombstones, all with little rocks sitting on top of them (like in Schindler's List) that the families of those buried have left. Also with the ticket to the Jewish museum, you could visit various old and new synagogues in the jewish quarter, and see exhibits of the history of the Prague jews (who were hit very hard in WWII). It was a fascinating area of town. So as to not make this entry ridiculously long, I am going to leave it here with the old town side of the Vltava. I will make another entry with the Prague Castle side of the Vltava. Cross your fingers that this loads...
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