The February 4 day weekend. President’s Day. It’s usually when we get our group of friends together and meet in some ski town for 4 days of skiing, hot tubing, and too much beer/wine for 30 something year olds. Obviously Mike and I weren’t jet setting to Colorado so we decided to do the next best thing: go to Prague. Everyone said how they enjoyed Prague and it’s such a close city! (2 hours by car) We had a whirlwind of a week before leaving with moving into the house, getting our stuff from Tennessee delivered, and then getting our army rented furniture delivered. All while Mike has to work and we only have one car. (Seriously, how do people do life with one car between 2 adults??) We haven’t gotten our international drivers license yet meaning we can’t drive out of Germany, so driving the quick 2 hours to Prague wasn’t an option. We decided to take the train. It made the trek a little longer, about 5 hours total, but it ended up being nice not having to worry about driving, parking, etc. The train had a very Harry Potter-esque feeling to it.

We arrived to Prague at 3:00pm on Friday. It was sunny but cold on our mile walk to the hotel. Our hotel was close enough to Old Town Square to be in walking distance to most of the sights, but it wasn’t too close to where we felt like tourists (even though we were, ha!)  We dropped off the bags, and decided to just wander the streets before the sun set. We went directly to Old Town Square to see the Astronomical Clock and Tyn Cathedral. The Astronomical Clock was installed in 1410 and is the oldest one still operating. At the top of each hour, a tiny production happens with bells and whistles. It’s nothing fancy and honestly if we missed it, it wouldn’t be a huge deal but we happened to walk by right at the top of the hour so we stayed. The streets are all cobblestone and the buildings are so pretty. From what we read, they didn’t take fire during the wars, so the exquisite architecture still stands. One thing that was hard to miss though was all the graffiti. It truly takes away from the beauty of the city when these old buildings are tatted up with fluorescent spray paint. We popped in and out of different places, eating mostly because isn’t that why people go on vacation? Kidding, kind of… We did stop for a drink at this bar called Black Angel’s Bar. It’s in a basement of a hotel (all the makings of the beginning of a bad horror movie) and it is apparently rated one of the top 10 cocktail bars in the world. The menu is leather bound and what appears as old parchment paper. The drinks all have history with the building or the owner in some fashion and come with an attached story. They had an amazing liquor selection, to include a wide variety of Kentucky bourbon. The bartender even told us where we could purchase some in Prague, which is awesome since we have yet to find bourbon anywhere in Germany. We called Friday an early night so we could wake up refreshed and ready for a full day Saturday.

Our hotel included a pretty nice breakfast each morning, so we ate before heading out on Saturday. First stop: Prague castle. It was only about a mile to mile and half walk from the hotel, but a good portion of it was uphill! We did one of the lower level tours, but it got us into the main attractions we wanted to see. We didn’t do an audio tour because one audio tour cost almost as much at 2 entrance tickets! Looking back, I wish we would have. There weren’t very many informational boards and when they did have one it was poorly descriptive. We left the castle not knowing one more thing about it than when we walked in. Before heading to lunch we checked out the John Lennon Wall. It’s just a wall that since the 1980‘s has been filled with John Lennon inspired graffiti and Beatles lyrics. It was pretty interesting to see! We are still on a Thai kick so we found the most amazing Thai food place to eat lunch. It was, of course, all the way across town but it allowed us to wander more around the city. We both were pretty tired, which is hilarious considering we went to bed at 8:30 the night before, ha. After our afternoon siesta, we wandered around the city more and ate burgers, fries, and beer for dinner.

Sunday we didn’t have anything planned. We hiked up Petrin Hill. It’s the tallest point in Prague and they have a mini replica of the Eiffel Tower overlooking the city. That was truly a hike – we definitely got our exercise in for that day. Our step counter was through the roof haha. We got brunch at a Mexican restaurant to reward ourselves after our hike and then roamed around some more. We decided to “Czech” out the Czech Beer Museum. (Ok, bad pun) It was fairly small with a history of beer in Europe, mainly the Czech Republic obviously and then concluded with 4 full beer tastings. We ended our last night in Prague at a fancy steakhouse where we ate entirely too much and spent way to much money. Monday we had breakfast at a fancy pancake place before heading to catch the train back to Germany.

Overall, we didn’t love Prague. If we never went back, neither of us would be upset. I know it seems like we didn’t have a lot “planned” but most of the things to see didn’t require tickets and were free. I am slightly disappointed we didn’t make it to a classical concert, but it overlapped dinner and my fat arse isn’t going to skip steak and scalloped potatoes!! It’s hard to really describe why we didn’t love it, but it just didn’t do it for us. I would head back to the Czech Republic for a beer spa! You basically soak in a tub of beer while drinking Czech beer. Sounds lovely, but nothing I can do whilst knocked up. Either way, we had a fun weekend exploring and just seeing a different culture. We truly are blessed and have not forgotten that.

Sorry there are no pictures on this post. We don’t have wifi yet and I’m having to do this at a local coffee shop with limited internet availability.