Prague!

Day 26
For the second night in a row we had been sleeping on a train. We got in at Prague Central Station around 8 in the morning. Once we entered the main station we didn’t know what we saw. It felt as if we were at a futuristic airport. The station looked extremely modern and had every facility you could wish for. Bars, shops, tourist info, internet cafe, clean toilets. For the past few weeks we had seen a lot of train- and busstations, but we hadn’t seen anything like this before.

We freshed up in the toilet and then went on to the internet cafe to find a nice hostel to stay at. As it was still early morning, we figured it wouldn’t be too hard to find a place to stay – we were right. We found a nice place to stay at and booked it for the very night. Afterwards we grabbed some breakfast at one of the bakery’s in the station and went to have our breakfast on a bench outside.

After finishing breakfast we walked over to our hostel, which turned out to be a good half an hours walk. Even though it was still early, the sun was already burning on our shoulders. Around 9 we checked in to our hostel, which turned out to be a good pick. We freshed up and after our shower we headed over to check out the city.
Prague turned out to be stunning. Amazing architecture, but modern at the same time. The city itself felt really safe and really easy going to get around. With our public transport cards we hopped on and off the trams that were going through the city. Firstly we grabbed a cable cart up the hill for some good views of the center from above. We climbed the mini-Eyffel tower that they built upon this hill to get up as high as possible.
Afterwards we walked over to the brewery of a monastery nearby. We sat down and had a nice summer beer in the garden of the brewery.

Just when we were about to leave a Dutch elder couple asked us whether we knew where the famous library was. We had no idea, but decided to have a peek our selves as the library was in the monastery too. The library turned out to be amazing indeed.
Afterwards we walked across one of the most famous bridges in Prague. From there we had a strawl to the main square.

Then Cliff sent us a message. He told us he was coming over to the city for a few hours before he was going to catch his plane to Paris. We decided to meet him at one of the subway stops. Unfortunately our text came in delayed, so Cliff had gotten off somewhere else. We tried to find him in the city, which turned out to be really hard. We told him to come to the famous bridge. We waited at the bridge for about 30 minutes. Just when we thought we wouldn’t find him anymore, I saw him walking around.

It was really fun to see Cliff again, this time in Prague. We gave him a beer we had bought for him earlier and had a little walk around the city again. To finish the trip off properly, we decided to have a shot of Absinth. Because we didn’t know how to drink Absinth, we asked the waitress to help us. She stirred the spoon in Luc’s glass, threw some sugar on it and lit it on fire. She told us to throw the spoon in the glass as soon as the flame was off. Unfortunately we couldn’t tell as it was clear daylight. The waitress thought it was out too and thew it in Luc’s glass. A few minutes later, Luc burned his fingers on his glass. It turned out the flame wasn’t out just yet which caused the whole glass of Absinth to lit on fire. Cliff and I laughed while sipping on our Absinth drink.

Right after Cliff had to run to the subway to catch his metro back to the airport. Luc and I headed off to the hostel for some food.

After dinner we met a few people drinking in front of the hostel. A Canadian girl, an American guy and a guy from France. We had a few drinks together with them and urged them to come with us to the club. After a few drinks and some good laughs the French and American guy decided to come out with us.

We went over to the 5-story club. A club with 5 stories thus with 5 dance floors. Fortunately we could get there by tram, as Prague has invented this cool thing called night trams. We grabbed a tram and got to the club. The club turned out to be a real touristy place. The whole club was crowded with tourist and pub crawlers. On top of that, out of the 5 floors, 3 of them were empty because of lack of people. I was amazed as this wasn’t some weekday, this happened to be Friday night.

With a good amount of drinks (which were really cheap again – 2 euro’s for half a liter of beer) we partied the night away. We finished the night off with a nice Subway sandwhich.

Day 27
We had a nice little sleep in the next morning. After two nights of sleeping in trains we finally had some brililant sleep on a proper mattress. We had a shower and went down to get some all-you-can-eat breakfast which ran until midday. During breakfast we met up with two Canadian guys we had met the night before already. We told them we were going to check out the castle in the city. They told us they were doing the same. We asked them whether they wanted to come and have some drinks with us that night. They were up for it, so we decided to meet them that night.

From there we had some breakfast. Luc had a shower afterwards. From there we grabbed a tram to get to the castle. The tram was boiling. Outside it was almost 40 degrees. We could see people fainting in the street because of the heat. Then, while in the tram, we saw the two Canadian guys walking. They seemed to be quite warm already because of this extreme hot weather. I yelled at them from the tram window and waived.
We decided to walk over to them from the next tram stop. From there we walked along with them to the castle, which was a steep walk up the hill. Once at the castle we had a little walk around. The castle was nice, but for any place you wanted to enter, you had to pay extra which we didn’t feel like doing. Especially as that entrance meant less beers for tonight.

After visiting the castle we met two English girls with whom we had a little chat. Afterwards we decided to check out one of the beer gardens that Prague has. We grabbed a tram and ended up in a park with a little stall where beer was sold. We sat down in the grass and a few nice cold beers while chilling out. We spent most of the afternoon sitting in the park drinking beer. Around 18:00 we had to move, as happy hour was about to start in our own hostel, which meant 1 euro for half a liter of beer.

We grabbed the tram back to the hostel and continued our drinking session in the hostel bar. We drank for a good two hours in the hostel bar. Once happy hour finished around 20:00, we decided to have some food. We walked over to a pizza place nearby and ordered some pizza. The pizza was extremely good. Definitely recommended and certified by me and Luc. After the pizza we freshed up.

Afterwards we had some more beers in front of the hostel before we were heading to a club we had heard good things of; Cross Club. The Canadian girl we had met the night before decided to come out too. We grabbed the tram and subway to the club. The neighbourhood of the club turned out to be a bit shady. On the way to the club we found a guy sucking off another guy in the bushes, right next to the road.
The club itself looked amazing. The whole club was made of old scrapyard material, like old car parts and other metal things. The music at the club turned out to be quite shit. As we made quite the effort to get to the club, we decided to have a drink outside on the terrace anway.

Even though we expected to go completely mental in the club, the night turned out all right anyway. We had a few drinks and chilled out, which wasn’t all that bad as we had been drinking since 15:00 o’clock anyway. After a few good hours everybody was getting tired. We grabbed a taxi and headed back to the hostel.

Day 28
Our final day in Prague was a very easy one. We woke up late, checked out of our room and sat down in the tv area downstairs. For lunch we had another massive pizza from the place next door. We were still full of all the beers we had been drinking the night before. It turned out to be a struggle to even finish our massive pizza. Afterwards we played poker with two other guys we had just met in the hostel. Luc even sold his socks to one of the guys for a bottle of water, as the guy was in need of a fresh pair of socks. As the weather was shit anyway, we just chilled the whole day before we left to the train station to get our train.

We got to the train station with a lot of spare time sitll. We sat down in the internet cafe, which gave me some oppertunity to write my blog. Afterwards we bought some water for our trip back to Amsterdam with the last coins we still had on us. From there we headed over to the train. The people on the train turned out to be two guys from Korea who barely spoke English. We decided to just lay down and sleep as much as possible.

Day 29
After a full month away we arrived back in Amsterdam the next morning. The weather in Amsterdam turned out to be quite equal to the weather in Prague the day before; rainy and cold. We got off the train and headed for our bus back home. Life in Amsterdam was still exactly the same as we had left it one month earlier. Only this time, we had a big smile on our faces and could think of all the good memories we experienced in those last 30 days.

Aug 25th 2011 – Aug 28th 2011