La Vie Boheme

So, I am officially a horrible blogger because I am about 5 weeks behind and am leaving Europe in exactly 11 days (AHHHHHH).  Miriam and I leave for Amsterdam tomorrow, and then I have a lovely week in Florence before heading home :)  I've been mentally blogging, so that sort of counts.  Anyway, I'm going to pick up where I left off so here's a little bit about my adventures in Prague (which is located in what was Bohemia, hence the title of this post).

Prague was nothing like I expected it to be.  People kept telling me how gorgeous it is, but I basically thought nothing of it.  However, Prague is actually incredibly gorgeous and picturesque.  Seriously, Prague IS Epcot and what every one pictures a European city to look like, hence why they shot EuroTrip there.

Prague is also where we discovered Free New Europe tours, which are exactly what they sounds like and they are AWESOME.  They tell you so much about the city and the guides are amazing (they even do tours in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv). So, in the morning after seeing the famous astrological clock, we headed out on one of their tours of Prague and it was AWESOME.  We saw everything there was to see in Prague, AND stopped at Bohemia Bagels for...BAGELS!!! Although, they were not the same as home it was still good to have a bagel for the first time in 3 months.  I didn't know much about the history of Prague before, but I got rundown in about 2 hours.  After the tour, Miriam and I went to the Jewish quarter to see all the different synagogues there, including the oldest active synagogue in Europe. We also saw the Holocaust Memorial there which includes thousands of names written all over the walls of the shul, and an exhibit of children's art made in a nearby ghetto that there teacher was able to save during the war.  Afterwards, we went to the communism museum and then headed to relax before dinner.  Dinner was really cool.  My friend who studied in Prague last year told us about this rooftop restaurant that had an INCREDIBLE view of Prague from the main square, so we headed over there for dinner and had a romantic rooftop dinner for two.  I also tried Austrian beer, which was delicious, and that's saying a lot, because I don't generally call beer delicious.

The next day I did a little exploring of some more churches and shuls and then Miriam and I went on a tour of the Prague Castle.  The views from the castle were beautiful and the castle is HUGEEEEE.  We also saw a church where the monks used to brew beer, as well as an old jail the Nazis and Communists used to torture people in...good times.  After the tour we saw the John Lennon wall and Charles Bridge.  Then we got dinner, napped, and went to Prague's 5 story club, which was actually a joke.  It was pretty much filled with a bunch of teenagers and had a floor called "black music".  It was an experience to say the least.  We left on the earlier side because we had an early train (yes, train, not plane) to Berlin!!

I forgot...Prague is also home to the fried cheese sandwich which is DELICIOUS.  It's like a flat mozzarella stick stuck between bread and you're supposed to put mayonnaise on it, but I used ketchup because clearly I don't eat mayonnaise.  However, the fried-cheese-sandwich-lady felt the need to very abrasively point out where the mayonnaise/ketchup was.  Czech people aren't quite as nice as Italians.

People taking pictures of the Astrological Clock...way more exciting than the actual clock.

View from our romantic dinner.