After our episode in Belarus, we were more than anxious to get on our plane to Prague. We arrived at the Prague airport in the afternoon on May 16th. So, for those of you who have been keeping up with our website, you know what came next. Yes!! The inevitable search for our hostel. We left the airport and according to our directions, we were supposed to find this certain bus, take it to a certain metro stop, and our hostel was about a 2 min. walk from that station. I know you are expecting a horror story right now, but there actually isn't one for once. We found the bus quite easily, everything was labeled in English at the bus stop and even on the bus. So, we were immediately in love with Prague. When we got to the metro stop, our directions were a little vague as to which exit to go out of and turn left, but we managed to get to our hostel, the A-Plus Hostel, just fine.
As soon as we walked into our room, an Aussie guy called Rod started chatting with us and was really nice, so we were feeling pretty good. We decided to take showers (of course) and get some food, because by this point we'd gone all day on a couple of apples and some airplane snacks. For those of you who know Shane...well, let's just say that he needed food! We had a restaurant in the basement of the hostel and decided not to be too adventureous and just eat there. We were pleasantly surprised with how delicious the food was. But, we could have just been starving. We were pretty knackered, so we decided to call it an early night and do our typical "wander around the city" the next day.
We got up the next morning, May 17th, had the best hostel breakfast up until that point, and set off to explore the city. Since I had been there before, I was excited to show Shane some of my favorite things from my first visit. We saw all the typical tourist sights: St. Charles Bridge, the palace, Old Town Square...I even showed Shane my hostel from my first stay (a landmark in itself.) I let Shane take all the pictures that day, because I already had some, so I nominated him to be photographer. Unfortunately, as I mentioned in an earlier blog, a little over a week after we left Prague, Shane's camera was stolen. So, we won't be posting any photos from Prague...sorry.
That night, we decided it would be a good idea to take a ghost tour. We had enjoyed the one in Edinburgh so much, that we were looking forward to another one. We had heard that Prague was the most haunted city in Europe, so what better place to take a ghost tour. We thought for sure it would be brilliant. Well, all I can say about that is, "don't ever take a Prague Walking Tours' ghost tour!" We started the tour and after about the first 5 mins., we couldn't decide whether our guide was crazy, a little drunk, or if she was just joking. It was horrible!! It was as if she was just making the stories up as we went along...and none of them really made sense, or were at all scary. However, we had paid more than usual for the tour, and personally, I was reluctant to say anything to Shane about how bad it was. It became apparent pretty quickly that he was thinking the same thing I was though.
She would ask us these questions and refuse to move on with the tour if no one answered. So, there came a point when I just started answering all her questions and pretending to know things that I didn't, just so she would move on and we could get the tour over with! Apparently, the entire group was feeling the same way we were, because by the end we were all just laughing at how ridiculous she was. Luckily, she only told 4 stories (we totally got our money's worth on that one). OH, and just when we thought it couldn't possibly get worse, her "assistant" would stroll out (not even run) from behind a building wearing a rubber Halloween mask, carrying a plastic knife covered in ketchup. He even put on a sheet at one point that was smeared with ketchup.
The good thing that came out of this experience, besides a good laugh, was meeting a lovely couple from California. We mangaged to bond with them over the ridiculousness of the tour. Their names were Kevin and Danika and they were from LA. For those of you who remember one of our first post on this site, the Temecula one, you might recall our favorite vineyard that we visited there. It was called Ponte. Well, here is a funny story. When we met Kevin and Danika, Shane thought she looked familiar. As the night went on, we were talking with them and found out that they had gotten married at Ponte Vineyard and there photos are all over the wall when you first walk in the vineyard of their wedding. So, Shane actually had seen her before. Crazy, isn't it?! It's a small world. We also ended up meeting a guy from Colorado later that night named Dan. He was in Europe visiting his sister, and they were traveling a bit.
The next day, May 18th, we decided to go to a little town in the southern part of Czech called Cesky Krumlov. I had not visited it on my last trip to Czech, and everyone told me I missed out. So, we boarded a train and were on our way. After the train had been traveling for a little over an hour, we stopped at a station (this is pretty routine). We sat there for 15min...30 min...1hr...and just kept sitting there. Now, no one on this particular train had spoken any English to us, so every time the anouncements came over the intercom, we remained lost. Finally, a girl in our compartment took pity on us and explained that the train had been in some sort of accident and we all had to get off. So, we got off the train and along with EVERYONE else, we were smashed and crammed onto a series of buses which drove us to the next town (next train station) where we boarded another train. We waited patiently on this train and after about 30 min., someone told us that we would also need to get off this train...but, turned out that we didn't need to. We finally got to the station where we had to catch our connecting train, and after a 9 hour journey (that should have been 4), we arrived in Cesky Krumlov.
We started walking into town from the train station and ended up making friends with a guy who was kinda following us. He was another Aussie named Ashley, and we ended up dragging him along in our search for our hostel. Now, this was a really small town, but wow! We had a really hard time finding that hostel. We did finally arrive at Hostel Postel and found it closed, so we had to call the person who ran it, cause she had gone home for the day. When we finally got in, we immediately fell in love with the hostel!!! It was adorable, clean, new, and we had our own room, kitchen, bathroom and little garden area.
We also fell in love with the town. This was the first point in our trip where we actually felt like we were on vacation. It was a really small town that was more than beautiful, and it had so much character! We also discovered these amazing little dessert things that were delicious. We called them turdlows, cause we couldn't pronounce the actual name. It was dough (kinda like cinnamon roll dough) that was wrapped in a cylinder shape around this metal rod and then roasted and rolled in cinnamon, sugar and nuts. Shane was a little obsessed with them. The girls working there knew him by our second day in the town.
We had only schedule to stay in Cesky Krumlov for 3 days, but as soon as we arrived, we booked another day. We spent 4 very relaxing days there. The highlights of those 4 days including running into Rod (the guy from our hostel in Prague) and all the people who were on his tour (they were all Aussies and tons of fun), meeting a wonderful couple named Chad and Miranda, spending a few days relaxing (Shane started reading his second book in his life while we were there), and just the overall scenery.
The couple we met, Chad and Miranda, live in Prague and teach English there. When we told them that we were going to be back in Prague for one night so we could catch our train to Poland, they invited us to stay at their apartment for the night, so we wouldn't have to pay for accomadation.
So, we left Cesky Krumlov on May 22nd and got on a train heading back to Prague. When we got to the station where the train had had its "accident" on the way down, I turned to Shane and said, "this is the bad luck station." Well, when the train didn't start up again, I just laughed and thought, "you have got to be kidding me." Luckily, after about 25 min., it started up again, and we made it safely to Prague. We met up with Chad and Miranda and went back to their place where they cooked spaghetti for us. We sat around and chatted and ate, and it was a fantastic evening. We were so appreciative to them and can't wait to repay their kindness one day.
The following morning, May 23rd, we went to the train station and got on a train headed for Krakow, Poland.
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