Czech It Out!

Pat Hughes here, reporting live from Prague, in the Czech Republic. There has been a great deal of activity in the area today, and I'm here to give you all the updates.
This morning we got up and headed down to the breakfast here at our Prague hostel, Sir Toby's. The breakfast was not included, which of course stinks, but for only 100 Czech Crowns ($5) You got a cook-it-yourself all you can eat buffet. Eggs, pancakes (first time seeing pancakes in Europe, most countries don't think of it as breakfast!), cereal, yogurt, fruit, etc. It was good and we filled up well to cover lunch as well (always a good thing).

After we left the hostel and got on a tram (Prague is made up of metro systems like subways and trams like subways that run in the middle of the cars on the roads above ground) to the center area of the city, just a 5 minute walk from Old Town Center. Prague's Old Town is really great. The architecture throughout Prague is so varied from Gothic to Art Nouveau and even to the only existing Cubist building in the world. Really great stuff.

At the Old Town Center we grabbed yet another New Europe free walking tour. Every city from here on out has one so we will be doing this in every city to really get acquainted with it from the get go. For free!

The tour was totally great as usual. Some of the many things we covered and places we visited include... (bullet list time again!)

• Astronomical Clock
• Wenceslas Square
• St. Jame's Cathedral (Which has a mummified severed hand hanging in it, relating to a legend involving a living statue of the Virgin Mary, a thief, and a priest with a saw...)
• Powder Tower
• Rudolfinum
• Old Jewish Quarter
• Spanish Synagogue
• Old New Synagogue
• Cubism Cafe
• Prague Castle (Oldest and biggest Medieval castle in the world)
• Charles Bridge

After the tour we went in some stores, stopped at the post office for Sharon to send out post cards, and headed over to the Franz Kafka museum. Now Sharon and I had no real interest, but Dave wanted to go and Jen went in with him. They said it was cool and trippy, it sounded pretty rad their descriptions actually made me kind of wish I went in. But the area outside was cool, we sat and hung out and there were these 2 statues of guys peeing on the Czech Republic that moved around (It was a water fountain). It was cool.

When they got out we headed back to the Astronomical Clock to see it go off for the 6pm hour. It does this little thing with moving characters and stuff, which in and of itself isn't that impressive... but when you look at it through the lens of being the oldest working machine in the world (built in 1410) it is pretty impressive.

We then headed back to the hostel for the obligatory rest/nap time that is becoming so common these days. Seems like everyone is starting to get run down by the trip (Not me, just to clarify... I usually just sit on a computer or writing in my journal or watching Lost or something during these times) Then the other three were off to a Pub Crawl. I'm sure they are having a bang up time right now. As for me? I headed down to the pub under the hostel with our roommate Emilio and we had this traditional Czech soup they were serving and hung out while a live Jazz band played. It was real cool and real chill. Now I'm just hanging out relaxing in the room, and it is good. Tomorrow? Berlin!