Prague 2
Trip Start
Nov 14, 2008
1
41
102
Trip End
Feb 26, 2009
Prague,
Bohemia,
Czech Republic
Thursday, December 25, 2008
To start the day off, we were given a walking tour of Prague Castle, which is the largest ancient castle in the world, with many buildings that didn't look castle-like. Good views though. In the castle area we went inside St. Vitus Cathedral, which has great stained glass windows and a lot of gold, and is one of the many grand buildings we've seen in Prague so far. We again walked over Charles Bridge, after spotting two motorised statues that have men pissing in different parts of water, quite funny. After the bridge I found a shop selling babooshka dolls of all different sportsmen - mainly soccer teams, but also American sports and rugby teams including the Wallabies and All Blacks. I was tempted to buy the Wallabies one but it was a little out of my price range.
River Vltava cruise
Another expensive and disappointing optional excursion, especially as the weather was too bad to have good views or go outside. The highlight was Secret Santa - I received chocolates (not exactly what I need) from an anonymous person, and I won't say what I gave because it'll give away my own anonymity.
Classical concert
I paid 17 Euro to watch a classical Christmas Eve concert in a church, something a lot of the locals do. It was a 4-piece strings ensemble that played Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Ave Maria, Pachelbel's Canon, Habanera from Carmen and a few other, mainly Czech, pieces. They ended the concert with some Christmas songs which I surprisingly enjoyed.
Christmas Eve
Prague is really beautiful at night, particularly around Christmas because of all the stalls and lights. Vicki organised us to do a pub crawl that started at a tiny pub with way too much smoke, so we all barred it and headed to the Beer Factory, which she was understandably upset about. The Beer Factory is awesome - there are about 15 round tables, each holding 10 people, with pour-it-yourself taps in the middle. On a big screen each table's beer tally is listed, so we were competing with some other tables to have the most (it's a fantastic business plan!), by the end of the night we managed to come in first! One thing I enjoy more than winning is drinking in the process of winning, and that's why I liked the Beer Factory.
