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.
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