Prague ... Day Five

The thing about waking up in a beautiful city is that you don't really care about crazy cold weather. Trust me, that is really saying something, because this girl doesn't love cold weather.  D and I both said that it was actually really nice to see the city in the snow.  It just felt like the city should be covered in snow.  There were huge flakes falling down, it was just gorgeous.

We slept in a little, bundled up for the day and with our first amazing breakfast bar, we headed to an adorable coffee shop.  It was right around the corner of our place, don't you love it?

I was in love with the way they serve the coffee too: silver tray, small water, cream and chocolate.  They know the way to my heart apparently.  

I thought about staying there all day.  However, we ventured out again in the cold.  Our big adventure of the day was to walk up to Prague Castle.  Since it was in the same direction we walked the day before, we went a little out of the direct path and crossed a different bridge, that way we could see places we hadn't yet.  It was only slightly cold/foggy/snowy out.

We found a church along the way, which meant we stopped in.  I really wanted to go in because by that point I was completely frozen.  I had been using my scarf to cover my head, but I still was a popsicle.  It ended up being one of the more popular ones called Church of our Lady Victorious - Infant Jesus of Prague. 

The little baby infant Jesus is a popular site to see, apparently.  Once I was able to feel my fingers again, we were off.  Prague castle is quite the journey up stairs and hills, which are much harder when they are covered in snow.  At least it was a pretty walk.  The stairs are a beautiful site to see. 

We finally made it to the top.  Look at the gorgeous entrance.  This massive fountain was in the entrance square.  We had to use our imagination a lot while we were in Europe and imagine how great it would be when it's actually on.

And then WOW.  That's all I have to say.  Seriously, holy crap that's amazing.  

We walked around a bit, actually went in the church and then realized that we needed tickets to see the whole church.  Once we bought tickets for the short tour we were able to see the churches, Golden Lane and the main hall.  Walking into the church really takes your breath away.  The pillars seem to reach all the way to the heavens with a beautiful pattern on the arched ceiling.  The stained glass itself was worth the travel up the hill. 

Um, seriously, if this church wasn't colder than it was outside, I would have stayed there all day long and taken way more pictures.

Really the pictures say enough on their own that I don't have to elaborate much on them. 

After getting colder in the church then we were standing outside, we ventured to the next part of the Prague Castle.  If the inside wasn't stunning enough, the outside didn't let you down. 

We went through the castle hall, which is where they had banquets, dancing, etc.  I can't imagine living in these quarters every day. What a life that must have been.

 

The image above is were the king or queen would sit and make judgements regarding the country.  I may have gotten in trouble for taking the picture below, but why not live on the edge, right?  These were the family seals. 

This area, which D looks so happy to be in, was actually quite interesting.  It was built so that knights could ride in on their horses instead of leaving them outside. 

 
We ventured down Golden Lane, which showed the life style of one that would have lived in the time frame.

They had a hall of knights armor and we ended with the jail cell area, where people got tortured.

Outside of Golden Lane was a panoramic view of the city, but with the snow, it was a little hard to see.

We leiserly made our way out of the castle area and back down the hill.  We stopped for some silly pictures and just enjoying being in the snow. 

My favorite statue across Charles Bridge.

By this point it was mid day and we still hadn't eaten.  I don't think the most amazing bars really filled us up much.  We went down to the square and ate at the outside food markets.  We shared, but really I made the best choice with the sausage.  

After taking some time back at our place, we went out to find dinner.  We walked around in circles about 10 times.  We did some window shopping and then headed to pub for beers and to warm up.  We found this popular bar and were SUPER tempted by these hanging pretzels.  We would have dived into them, but really, how long had they been sitting there? 

It's like the hubby only had some ham for lunch.  I think he was hungry...

The server said really the beer is way better than supper, but that probably wouldn't be the best decision.  D got the goulash and I went for the Czech soup.  D did decide the Pilsner Urquell tasted so much better here vs at home. 

After the full day of walking and site seeing, we were pretty spent.  We went to the local market and got some delicious snacks along with our favorite strawberry breakfast bars for the morning.  D attempted to watch the KU game but couldn't find it, so he had a beer instead.  I was exhausted and passed out shortly after.  

Prague ... Day Four

So now my favorite place of our journey.  Fair warning, we took over 500 pictures here, so this post (and ones to follow) will be fairly long.

By this point, we were getting pretty familiar with the train stations.  We hopped off the train, made our way to the entrance and used WIFI to figure out where we needed to walk to find our studio apartment we were renting through AirBnB.  For those that don't know about AirBnB, you should probably look it up.  It is pretty amazing.

We couldn't actually check in until 12:30, and we arrived at 9:30.  That lead us to walking in the direction of the studio and stopping at another Starbucks for wifi.  D's name in Czech =

It was starting to snow some, so I emailed the owner and asked if we could drop our luggage off early.  She was quick to respond and we headed over to find our place.  The streets in Prague were even more adorable than Amsterdam.  They were little cobble stones, which make it really annoying when you are rolling luggage down the street.  We even had someone make a comment about it, oh well.

Since it was a studio, it was a little harder to decipher which building was the right one.  I pulled up the picture again and we were able to get the right door.  We headed to the 3rd floor and met with Pavel, who takes care of the studio for the owner.  He was so nice and we left our bags while he finished cleaning up the place.  We took a key, which was super cool, and headed out to find lunch.

I was so cold at this point, all I wanted for lunch was soup.  Walking down the street we found a small cafe that had what we were looking for, and I got the tomato soup,  D enjoyed a salami panini and we got our first still and sparkling water. 

Our studio was in such a great spot.  It was super close to the main shopping square and only a few blocks from Old Town Square, which is where we headed after lunch.  The streets there are very narrow and most streets we were on you could not drive through.  The buildings in the city are so striking, I was just in love with them.  The Astronomical Clock was the first building we saw as we turned the street into the square. 

The design is just amazing and I still can't comprehend all that went into creating it.  It's attached to the town hall, which we ventured through on the way up the tower.  It hadn't started snowing too hard, so we looked around the square.  I just loved the Church of the Virgin Mary before Tyn that just towers out between other buildings.  

This is the statue that sits in the middle of the square and people sit around when it's not freezing cold.

Even the archways were amazing.  We tried to go see the Church of the Virgin Mary before Tyn, but it wasn't open. 

We were finally cold enough that we made our way up the tower.  Most places in Europe we walked when we could.  Stairs vs elevator?  We would always choose the stairs.  The view from the top of the Tower was breathtaking.  I could have stayed up there all afternoon if the wind hadn't picked up and I could feel my fingers. 

The warmth didn't last long since the top of the tower was completely open.  The city roof tops were my favorite part, and we braved the cold to get some good pictures.  On the way back down we stopped and took more pictures.  D was almost too tall for all the door ways there, it made me laugh.  

At the bottom of of the tower, there was this ridiculous room that was covered in tiny stones that had been painted to create the designs.  Not only was the design beautiful the room was huge, like everything in Europe.

It wasn't too late, so we decided to head over the main bridge and go see St. Nichols before heading back.  We came across the church on the way and had to stop in.  Comparing a lot of churches, this particular one wasn't overly elaborate, but the chandelier that hung in the center was my favorite.

So when you are walking down the street and run into this gold fountain in the middle of the street, you take a picture. 

The path to the church lead us over the Charles Bridge, which connects the old town with the new town.  We traveled across pretty quickly because it was so cold.  The visibility wasn't the best and we knew we would travel over it a couple of times.  

Each side of the bridge has a beautiful tower that you cross through.  The exterior of Church of St. Nicholas does not do justice and prepare you for what you are going to see on the inside. 

Amazing.  The view from the back of the church just leads your eye directly to the gold altar highlighted with the lighting. 

Each side altar was a site to see, draped in gold and statues.  I also loved the organ.  Growing up, I always sat with my grandmother as she played at church.  By the time we made it up to the balcony we had to pick up the pace.  We had complete forgotten about the time and the church was closing up for the day. 

By that point I was frozen, since the snow had really started to come down.  I had seen mulled wine and I finally decided to get some at a cart on the way back to town square.  They also have these Almond pastries that are warm, sugary and hit the spot.

We took a little break and headed back to the studio to relax a bit before dinner.   The place was super cute.  It looked exactly like the pictures, decked out in Ikea furniture.  It was our home away from home in Prague. 

The kitchen had everything you would need to cook, which we took advantage of later in the trip.

We took a recommendation from our hostess and went to a restaurant called Kolkovna that had good Czech food.  It was actually quite a walk from our studio, but it was nice to see the city.  It was pretty busy and we ended up sitting down in the downstairs area.  I'm pretty sure it was because we looked like tourist, but we didn't care.  This restaurant made their own sausages, so of course we had to get some to start along with our beers.

These were definitely the best sausages of the entire trip!  The creamed horseradish was the best on them!  Our server was quite interesting too.  He didn't speak much English, but I still tried to figure out what he recommended for my dinner.  I kept naming off things I thought looked good, but he kept saying I wouldn't like it for one reason or another.  I ended up ordering the Duck and D got a meat filled with more meat dish.  I didn't expect my dish to be so large, it was literally 1/2 a large duck and a whole plate of sides.  D was pretty sad when we compared, lol.

The food was actually quite tasty.  I don't usually eat duck, it's so rich, but it was cooked well.   The sides, especially the bread and potato dumplings were ridiculous.  We were completely stuffed after that meal.  After dinner we wanted to get some snacks from a store on the way home so we didn't have to eat out every meal.  We ended up getting a few beers at a store around the corner from the restaurant and these amazing breakfast bars.  We ended up being a little obsessed with these bars, and liked them so much we ended up buying this box multiple times.

After that we decided to take a slow stroll back to our studio and get showered, warm up a bit and hit the hay.