My Time in Prague
Had been traveling solo for about a week and my mom met me in Prague. Awesome and fun to explore and be with her and to have some company.
Prague is a beautiful, old city. We started by walking along the water, and went up into the Dancing House, which was a funky looking building. We got a pretty cheap drink and went out to a lookout of the city.
Then, went to a pretty tasty dinner and the beer in Prague is another thing they’re known for. We stopped at a few Christmas markets, and admired some buildings. Then walked across the Charles Bridge, which was massive led towards the big castle.
In Prague, they have this really tasty dessert that is sold all over the place. Still not sure the name, but it’s this doughy bread formed into a tube-looking thing with the middle wide open — sort of like a bagel but in the shape of a rod. And then they put cinnamon and sugar on it and sometimes fill with other stuff. Very tasty.
The next day, we went to the main square, saw the famous astronomical clock go off at the hour (was a bit anticlimactic, but the history of the clock makes it cool). Then we went up in one of the towers overlooking the main square.
- Went to an old synagogue and Jewish cemetery. The synagogue was powerful. They had 78,000 names written on the walls to commemorate the 78,000 from Prague that had died in the Holocaust. Seeing each of those names that represented an entire person that had their lives taken away got me. And then, upstairs there was art that children drew from their time in the ghetto and that was also powerful. I decided not to go to Auschwitz when I was in Poland since I had already been there and wasn’t in the mental space to fully be there I felt, but being here in Prague was a reminder of how present this stuff was throughout all of Europe and the massive scale at which it took place.
- Then we went to the big Prague castle that had a massive, very old church, and huge grounds to walk around. We were even able to walk up into what must have been some sort of fortifying/fortress area where we saw old relics and armor that was used in the fighting. There were weapons, tons of armor suits like the one to the left here and more.
- After that, to the Franz Kafka museum, which was also powerful. He was a famous writer from Prague and the museum detailed his life, thoughts and journey. One thing that was crazy was that he had someone promise not to release his work and that person ended up doing it and he became famous.
- Visited the Prague Beer Museum where they had 30 beers on top (we sampled 10) and then an awesome dinner at this place called U Kroka. Had this massive pork knee thing that was so much meat but so insanely tasty.
—
Prague didn’t feel quite as capitalistic/massive city in the same way as Vienna or Munich (which we visited the following day). It was a bit more laid back it felt, but still very busy, extremely historic and lots to do. The city sits in the middle of this large body of water and a lot of the city is up on a hill that offers beautiful views. Would highly recommend Prague as a stop. We could have been there longer, but a day and two full nights ended up being pretty solid.
