Praha!

Today we explored Prague some more. We got a free breakfast at our hotel and then started out into the city. At first I was wishing that I had worn my shorts again. It was so humid out that we were really warm.

Alleyway that we took to go up to the castle

We got to climb a lot of stairs again today. This was about half way up

And that's what we had just climbed. The view made it worth it though

Prague once we got to the top of the stairs. We were glad we went to the observation tower yesterday since it was cloudy all day today!

The tower on the top of that hill is where we went yesterday

At the entrance to the castle grounds. There's a changing of the guards every hour.

Prague Castle! Built in the 9th Century and holds the Guinness World Record for the largest coherent castle complex in the world. Royalty lived an ruled here during the medieval times. They had an exhibition with a lot of history in it. It's been added to, burned down, and restored many times throughout the centuries. It was really cool!

The South Tower. We had bought tickets that gave us access to almost every place, but this one wasn't included. You had to pay extra to go to the top. We figured that since the price was half of the ticket price we'd already paid and we had climbed a few church towers, we were okay with skipping this one.

We saw the royal palace and St. Vitus Cathedral. Besides the history exhibition we were pretty much done, so we skipped some of the other stuff

Inside the cathedral

The ceiling where the paint is coming off

This one was still in tact

Tomb of John of Nepomuk, a martyr of the Seal of the Confessional (he wouldn't tell the King what he had been told in the Queen's confession, so the King had him drowned in the river)

As we were at the castle, it really started to rain. It reminded us of California rain though, it was steady, but small drops of water. We had our jackets and our umbrella, so we were ok. We were in sandals though, but sometimes it's better to just have wet bare feet than wet feet in shoes.

I had heard about these pastries in our guidebook, so I was determined to get one. They're called Trdelnik, and are a rolled pastry around a hot rod and then rolled in whatever you want. I got the cinnamon sugar one, and then we had the option of adding a filling. Either plum jam or chocolate. Of course I got chocolate, which turned out to be nutella. Doug got the same thing. And they were really really good.

Mmmmm

We found a little alcove and sat on the stairs and ate our treats. Doug wasn't that hungry so I finished his too

I liked the painting on this building

We then walked to Charles Bridge. This is the view back towards the castle

Overlooking the Vltava River, the longest river in the country

Cool looking church, but I dunno what it's called

The Astronomical Clock (tower)

The clock was first installed in 1410. It's the 3rd oldest astronomical clock in the world and the only one still working. It's been restored and fixed many times since it's been built, but it's still working!

It's kinda hard to explain (and I'm not exactly sure how it works), so if you wanna know more, I suggest googling it :) That's what I had to do too

We walked around Old Town for a bit and found our Christmas ornament to represent Prague. I love all of their cobbled stone roads and sidewalks, although they became kinda slick in the rain. The rain really started picking up in the afternoon, and the temperature dropped quite a bit, so I was glad I was in pants. We went back to our hotel around 3:30, and I took a much needed nap. When I woke up we walked to a nearby mall and got food. We were going to get gyros, but since they only took cash and we had forgotten my wallet with the cash in it and only had Doug's card, we had to settle for McDonalds. But at least we tried!

Our hotel is quite interesting, especially the layout. I thought I'd give a quick look at how we get to our room.

First of all, we have 3 different keys to use. The first is used for the door coming in from the street:

This is the foyer. We walk up the first flight of stairs to get to the elevator

We're in room 301 but are on the 4th floor. It starts on floor 0

It's a glass elevator so we get a view of the courtyard

Then we walk up these stairs to get to the first door, which is at the end of the hallway on the left, perpendicular to the door seen here

This door has its own key that we use to open it

It leads to a hallway with this door, which we don't have to use a key to open, but as the sign says, we do close it

Then we come to our room's door, which of course has its own separate key

It's a bit strange, but at least we feel safe! Nobody's getting to our room easily!

We're both pretty drained tonight and are looking forward to some rest. We have a 4 and a half hour train ride to Vienna tomorrow, and should arrive around 1:30 in the afternoon, giving us some time to get settled, explore, and maybe do some laundry (if we can find a place).