Europe by Food by Marlee: Prague

For the second half of our break, we went to Prague!

I visited Prague for a few days when I visited Europe the first time, but we only had one free day (really like four hours) to walk around. I also didn't remember that much about it so I figured that a return visit would be a worthwhile venture. It was just a five hour bus ride from Berlin, and our bus was SWEET. The seats were super comfy, everyone had their own TV, and we got free coffee. Which is basically everything I want in life.

It was just a teeny-tiny-miniscule bit warmer in Prague, but we still had to take lots of breaks from walking outside.

Poising awkwardly on the Charles Bridge. Prague Castle in the background.

Our hostel was super nice also. It was called the Czech Inn, oh you pun-y people. We had breakfast in the hostel every morning and it was a very nice buffet. If only I could have that every morning...

It was in the bar, where we also enjoyed some tasty Czech beer.

Even the ceiling impressed me.

For our first dinner we went to a restaurant down the street at the recommendation of the hostel attendant. It was 'bohemian' food, because apparently the Czech Republic is part of a region that was the original Bohemia. Our food was amazing and super cheap and we were most pleased with ourselves.

I had roasted boar with a rosehip sauce and dumplings. ROASTED BOAR. Boar. I felt like I was a princess in a period piece film or something. It was tasty, with texture like normal pork.

This is what Belle was first served at the Beast's castle but then got weirded out because it was never clear what kind of animal that Beast actually was.

Blair and Erin both had wild hare, which I tasted a lot of. It was also amazing and delicious and made me feel like a fairy tale princess. (I don't think usually that's people's reactions to eating weird meats but whatever).

Hare's the hare.

However, the most exciting part of the night was that Miki came to meet me. Of course his train was late because it broke down because of Hungary. But it was still great!

Look at how cute we are.

Some of us smile for pictures, while others pretend that Europeans are better than everyone else.

We took a walking tour one day and learned a lot about the city's history. Basically the history of Prague is just a long string of dudes being jerks to one another and then getting revenge. There were also two really devastating fires and several defenestrations. Our tour guide was this hilarious Greek student who would say things like "and then he did suicide;" his English wasn't the best but he made up for it with flair.

After the two hour tour was over, we needed to warm up naturally. We had lunch with our tour guide (because we were the friendliest) and two German girls on the tour. We ate in a restaurant that was pirate themed but had typical Czech food. I had roast beef and dumplings.

Dumplings were unintentionally a thematic element of the trip.

Prague has a lot of cool buildings, which they work really hard to keep in good shape because some lady had a dream once about a fancy city named Praha. More history for you.

Cool building that made me want to draw shapes.

After not eating for thirty minutes, we of course had to get a snack. We had the same kind of sweet dough columns that they sell in Hungry although these weren't as delicious. But still a good snack.

This is one of our many attempts to smile more like Europeans for pictures.

Miki also found a monastery where they brew beer, because we hadn't had any beer for a whole 45 minutes. There were a lot of buildings on the monastic complex but we only went to the bar/restaurant. We met a very nice old man who has apparently lived everywhere and knows everything. He told us that the monastery's IPA is the best in all the land (of the Czech Republic). Miki was very excited about the huge beer brewing containers and kept trying to get us to take a picture in front of them.

But what he really wanted was a picture of himself in front of them.

The next day we went to Prague Castle, which is actually a huge castle complex with ten different museums and/or exhibits within it. It took us nearly all day to visit everything, and we even stopped reading the very wordy accounts of Czech history half-way through.

Lots of historical artifacts though!

Like real suits of armor! One such suit pictured here with a wax model of a 15th century dodo bird.

The rooms inside of the buildings were colder than it was outside that day. I can't imagine how people lived there. They must have been fans of layering their chain-mail and lace corsets and whatnot.

We all forgot our chain-mail so we had to take a medieval coffee break to warm up.

The architecture in the castle complex was very awesome. One building was a former house for single ladies, which sounds like it would be a brothel but was just for classy rich women. Inside was an exhibit on all of the gargoyles of the castle, and they were all freakishly awesome.

My impression of a Czech gargoyle.

Afterwards we went to Lennon's Wall. No one really knew what the purpose of the wall was, but according to Wikipedia, it was a symbol of artistic expression and free speech during the country's communist years. There was originally just one portrait of John Lennon, but it's been repeatedly covered by graffiti and other paintings of John Lennon. A lot of the graffiti that we saw featured snippets of John Lennon songs (like every other graffitied wall).

All of the fellow tourists were so excited to take pictures in front of it.

We had lunch/dinner at a random local restaurant, where I had 'duck in a pan' with red cabbage and assorted dumplings. It was delicious of course.

They weren't kidding about the pan.

Since we knew it would be our last meal in a real Czech breakfast, we had dessert. I had apple strudel, which was on practically every menu in both Germany and the Czech Republic. It was super yummy. Strudel is pie's cool cousin.

Our final day we did a little shopping and meandering. Miki and I bought a padlock to put on a bridge somewhere (we've been meaning to do that for as long as we've been dating). We finally put it on the Charles Bridge. The grid that we put it on is apparently some kind religious icon, because as we were trying to lock it on a MILLION other tourists came up to take their pictures next to it. They would put one hand on the cross thing on the stone ledge and then their other hand on the iron dude in the center, arranging their fingers a certain way. Then they would wait for their friends to take a picture of them. I don't know if it is some kind of pilgrimage thing, but it kinda looked like it was some nonsense that a tour guide made up one day. Anyway, three cheers for our love lock!