Me in the Old Town Square
We left Munich early on Tuesday morning for Prague, which is in the Czech Republic for those of you who are geographically challenged.
The train ride was super long– 8 hours, I believe. It took us pretty much the whole day to get there, and we arrived after dark. That was fun, trying to find the apartment in the dark and the rain in a city where the streets are designed for you to get lost! (No lie, our tour guide told us that the city was designed so that when Prague was invaded by enemy troops, the people would lock themselves in the buildings and the invaders would get lost in the streets!)
The apartment we stayed in was super nice, and had a kitchen so I was finally able to make myself a cup of tea! I brought some with me to Italy, but there’s no place to boil water around here, which is unfortunate. Danyelle, the aspiring chef of our group, has been hit particularly hard by this.
Our Kitchen
The first night we took a short walk across the Charles bridge and saw the city of Prague at night. All of the buildings look the same as they did hundreds of years ago, and the castle and St. Vitus cathedral looked so beautiful all lit up at night. Our tour guide (from the next day) told us that Prague is one of the most well-preserved cities in the world, and it shows. Just walking around the streets I can picture ladies with big poofy dresses walking in the same place that I am now. It helps that there are horse drawn carriages everywhere bringing tourists on tours of the city.
The next day everyone planned to take a free walking tour of the city. The flyers said that the tour was going to leave from the front of Starbucks at 10:00, so around 9:30 Jess K and I walked down to the Starbucks on the other side of the Charles bridge for breakfast, thinking we would just leave with the tour at 10. As 10:00 was creeping closer, the paranoid in me wanted to make absolutely sure that we were here on the right day at the right time, so we asked the barrista who told us that the tour was to leave from the Starbucks in the Old Town Square, not the one we were currently in. I downed the rest of my coffee and we were off, running back across the Charles bridge, trying to follow the complimentary map (it was from Starbucks so, of course, all of the Starbucks in the city were represented on the map but other than that it was not terribly accurate). On the way, we passed several other groups of CIMBA students on their way to find the same tour we were trying to find, only they were going in the wrong direction! Jess and I yelled to them that they were going the wrong way, but the first group just kept walking, thinking we must be mistaken. the second group we saw turned around to follow us, but we were in such a hurry to get across town that we lost them in the crowd.
By the time we found the Old Town Square, it was 9:55- we had 5 minutes t find the tour, which said it was leaving from the front of the Tourist Information Center. Well, sure enough, there were a bunch of tour guides standing out in front of the Tourist Information Center with their tours advertised on their umbrellas, but none of the logos matched the one on the map and none of the tour guides there seemed to know where the tour guide we were looking for could be. We even asked inside of the tourist Information Office, but nobody seemed to know.
The Astronomical clock in the Old Town Square
There was another guide at the pick-up point that was giving a free tour but his did not start until 10:30. Thinking this was the best way to go, Jess and I wandered around the Old Town Square for the next 30 minutes through the market in the middle of the square. We also happened upon the Starbucks, where I asked about the tour one last time only to hear that we had missed it by just a few minutes and they were probably already in some other square down the street and we could catch up with them if we went there. Well, not even knowing where the hell we were in the first place, we decided to stick with the 10:30 tour.
This turned out to be a fantastic choice. Two other guys from our program ended up on the tour with us. Our tour guide was a Mexican who had been traveling for a number of years before settling down in Prague. He had a job teaching English before he was one day asked by his friend to be a tour guide because his English was pretty good. This guy had THE funniest laugh in the world. It was ridiculous. Additionally, while giving us his spiel on the Old Town Square he recounted a time some famous musician had performed there, complete with singing and dancing. He also found an unused tram ticket on the street and gave it to Jess.
The CIMBA representation on the tour
Jess and I took our time getting back to the apartment, stopping on the way for what Jess likes to call “European-style hot dogs” which are sort of like American hot dogs except that the bun is just a roll with a hole driven through it. We also stopped by the river to chill for a while and feed the ducks with some leftover hot dog roll.
Duckies!
Had a pretty uneventful night, did a lot of people-watching 
The next morning I woke up with terrible stomach cramps, so I stayed in all morning and made myself some more tea . Around 2:00 I finally went out for a walk, once again with Jess K. She was sort of like my travel buddy for the rest of the trip. This time we took a more leisurely stroll and stopped to get some souvenirs from the stands set up along the Charles Bridge. I really wanted to see the inside of Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral, so we made our way up there, following the same route the tour guide had taken us the day before (I didn’t know any other way to get there). We didn’t end up going inside the castle (you had to pay for that) but we did go inside of the cathedral, which was gorgeous. Jess found it shocking when I told her that there were people buried in there, just like in a lot of cathedrals and basilicas in Europe, until we cane to some of the alcoves that had the actual sarcophagi with the sculptures of the people on the top. We sort of wished we knew Czech at that point, because we couldn’t read any of the signs to figure out who was in there.
St. Vitus Cathedral
We did meet up with some Furmites (kids from Furman in South Carolina that also are on our program) inside of the cathedral who were on a castle tour at the time, and they told us that the inside of the castle was sort of cool but nothing special, which made me feel better about missing it. We did wait until 6:00 to see the Gold Road where all the alchemists lived, because it was free after 6. It was a cute little street, but I can’t see why anyone would pay to see it.
Jess K on the Gold Road
Our next stop was “Paris Street”, a street that was designed to look like the ones in Paris. The problem is, when they were renovating the buildings they ran out of funds after they had finished only one side. So only one side looks like Paris, the other side just looks like Prague. Still cool in my opinion. This street also has the reputation for being the most expensive street in all of Eastern Europe. All the designers have stores here: Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Burberry; you name it, it’s here. We decided to pay it a visit because Jess wanted a pair of designer sunglasses as her major purchase in Europe. She didn’t end up getting them here, not only because it is the MOST expensive place to shop like I said before, but all of the shops were closing because it was almost 8:00 by the time we got down there.
Stayed in that night as my stomach cramps returned with a vengeance. Not fun 
. Did get some reading done though.
It was just as well because we had to leave for Vienna bright and early the next morning!
Laura, your blog is so insightful, I feel like I am on this trip with you. It is a good thing that you are accustomed to travling, and you go with your gut feelings.(even though your “gut” did not agree with you on this trip!)