Dobry den Praha! (Hello, Prague!)

Happy December loyal readers! I'm happy to say that I was able to spend a spectacular JULIA-filled week in Prague celebrating Thanksgiving and general holiday-ness with my love :)

DAY 1: My first adventure was flying out of Beauvais airport, the third and smallest airport in the Paris area. I discovered that calling it "Paris" would be like calling San Jose airport "San Francisco," but the flight was cheap and I honestly didn't know it would be that far! I had to take the metro to the end of one of the lines and then from there take a special Beauvais airport charter bus for AN HOUR AND A HALF to the airport. Once I arrived, I realized that it had a grand total of 3 gates. Wow. But after a short hour and a half flight out of cold and rainy Paris, I arrived in sunny and beautiful Prague, took a cab to my hotel, and had a couple of hours to kill before Julia got out of class.

I have fortunately developed a sense of direction that before now was completely absent from my brain, so I felt reasonably confident taking a map from the hotel and setting off to explore the Old Town Square and Wenceslas Square that were very close to the hotel (perfectly located in the center of town!). I grabbed a mocha from Coffeeheaven and strolled among the throngs of tourists, looking in shops and perusing the souvenir market. It definitely felt like the holidays and there were lots of bustling tourists.

Julia and Alex met me at the hotel and we went to Chez Marcel next door. Yes, that's right, a French restaurant! Needless to say, my brain was now dealing with THREE languages on very little sleep so it was slow going on the mental processing when I was ordering :P After dinner, Julia and I returned to the hotel where we joyfully popped the bottle of sparkling wine her fantastic parents ordered for us on our arrival, opened a bar of dark chocolate Toblerone and a roll of Hob Nobs cookies (which I imported from London), and proceeded with a much-needed catch up session and girl talk late into the night!

DAY 2: We woke to a sunny Thanksgiving morning and took the opportunity to grab coffee and walk across the Vlatava River to Prague Castle - actually a complex of a cathedral and several buildings up on a hill. The walk up was beautiful and I got to see a fantastic panorama of the city on my first day. We visited St. Vitus Cathedral, which I think may be my second-favorite cathedral in Europe after Notre Dame! It's very gothic in its architecture but apparently was finished in the early 1900s, so the back half of the cathedral has art nouveau stained glass that was very unexpected but stunningly beautiful.

After lunch at an adorable restaurant with a name I cannot pronounce (Julia can confirm that I was literally obsessed with the interior decoration), we visited the John Lennon wall. It's just a random wall, but after Lennon's death someone graffiti-ed on the wall as a memorial. The government covered it up but people kept coming back and painting lyrics and pictures. Now it's left up as a colorful and beautiful tribute to his words!

We went to Thanksgiving dinner at the Marriott with Julia's study abroad program and were met with a mouth-watering spread of literally every food I could think of. Except mashed potatoes and green beans. Really? They literally could have asked any American on the street and they would've told them they were rather essential. Regardless, the food was DELICIOUS and hit the spot! We retired in our food coma to reruns of Law and Order online in our giant comfy hotel bed :)

DAY 3: On Friday morning Julia took me to the Jewish Quarter. Apparently Prague used to have the third largest Jewish population in Europe, but after the Holocaust there are very few left in the city so the synagogues and buildings from the former Jewish ghetto have been converted into museums. We started at the Pinkas synagogue, where the names of all of the Jews who were deported from Prague during the war are listed on the walls. There were also drawings on display that were made by the children kept in the detention camp nearby. It was a sobering and powerful reminder of the lasting influence of the genocide on the population.

We moved to the Old Jewish Cemetery, where generations of Prague Jews were buried in subsequent layers, making the ground level about 10 feet higher than street level! It was an amazing sight to see the old giant tombstones in varying states of uprightness, and it was definitely worth the price of admission!
The Spanish Synagogue was decorated in a very different style than I was used to, with a lot of dark interior wood and gold and jewel toned paintings in a Moorish style. I thought it was spectacular and was sad we couldn't take pictures :(

After lunch at Bohemia Bagel, Julia's favorite hangout spot, we went to the Alphonse Mucha Museum. He's the artist behind most of the famous art nouveau work that we think of today, and spent most of his professional career in Paris! His name and art is all over Prague, as he was a very proud Slav and lived outside of Prague later in life. I was so happy that I finally got to know the story behind the art that I love, and definitely bought a couple of posters to take home :)

Julia and I had a picnic dinner on our bed while watching more SVU, then joined Alex and her younger sister Emily (visiting from Tacoma) for drinks at their favorite bar, Orange Bar. They were delicious and we had a great girls' night - for about half the price as in Paris! I love Prague :)

DAY 4:  Saturday we ran some errands in the morning, made a pit stop at Coffeeheaven, and then took the tram to Petrin Tower. On the hill below the tower is the Disappearing Man, a memorial to the victims of the Communist regime. It represents a loss of humanity and I thought it was extremely powerful. We then took the funicular up to the top of the hill and then climbed the stairs of Petrin Tower to get an incredible panorama of the city! Petrin Tower was built after some Czechs saw the Eiffel Tower at the World's Fair in 1900 - it's much smaller, but still gives the same great view of its home city as the Eiffel Tower! It's too small for an elevator though, so we had to suck it up and climb the spiral staircase :)

The four of us met up at a neighborhood pub restaurant for traditional Czech dinner - a plate of goulash and dumplings accompanied by a mug of Pilsner Urquell! It was DELICIOUS, and I didn't even hate the beer like I was expecting :P Definitely a big fan of the dumplings, they were perfect for soaking up the thick, savory, slightly spicy sauce!

Saturday was the opening day of the city's Christmas markets, which were spread between several open squares around the center of town. Huge Christmas trees, street lights, singing choirs, roasting sausages - I was in heaven! It definitely was the perfect way to kick off the holiday season! For dessert we bought trdelnik (don't ask me to pronounce it), an ubiquitous street food at the market that we had to try. It's basically sourish dough wrapped around a metal dowel and toasted, then rolled in cinnamon and sugar. Like a churro flavor, but a bit less sweet. In other words, YUM.

 

DAY 5: Sunday began with brunch at the Globe, an English bookstore and restaurant that is one of Alex and Julia's favorite spots. It was beautiful inside with red walls, fun art, and a loft dining area. I had the eggs benedict I'd been craving, and lo and behold it came on a delicious toasted (and huge) bagel! Three bagels in one week - that's more than I can say in the states!

Under the pretext of sore feet, but really out of a shameless desire to see Robert Pattinson (I'm team Jacob, for the record), a bunch of us went to see New Moon, the new Twilight movie. Czech subtitles really made it an experience, and I have to admit that I actually enjoyed the movie - more than I can say for the last one, where I actually felt myself getting dumber as it went on...

After strolling the markets again and trying some candied almonds (again, YUM!), we headed to dinner at Julia's favorite Prague restaurant, Clear Head, a vegetarian place that's more of a local place and off the beaten path. It was the BEST food I've had in months, and I thoroughly relished every bite of my bulgur risotto with stir-fried veggies, tempeh and sundried tomato and peanut pesto. Ahhh now if I could only find that in France! I don't think "vegetarian" translates here...

DAY 6: Unfortunately, I had to leave early Monday morning in order to be home for class in the afternoon, so I spent Sunday night in Julia and Alex's dorm room. Problem was, Emily was sleeping there too and so four of us had to share two TWIN beds. Not a good arrangement by any means. Emily had to leave at 5am and I had to be up at 6:30, so needless to say I did not sleep too well. But after dragging myself out of bed I bid a quick and sleepy goodbye to Julia and boarded the bus to the airport in the cold Prague morning. When I finally stumbled into school that afternoon, still carrying my backpack, I discovered that class had been canceled! I joyfully walked home and fell into bed.

What an amazing week! Prague is an amazing city and I would highly recommend it to anyone traveling through Europe. It's much smaller and more manageable of a city than Paris, and I can see how Julia really feels at home there. Although I definitely feel almost like a native Parisian now, there's still an incredible amount of the city that I don't know! But I only have one more day until I leave again, this time for a weekend in Berlin with Julia and Alex. Funny how I'm seeing Julia more in Europe than I have when we've been at school in San Diego and Tacoma...

Stay tuned for more pictures and Christmas market adventures! Love to all - I'm thankful for YOU this year!