Prague - Tuesday

Our goal in going away was just that, to get away. We thought that whatever we did in this foriegn city would be great, so with that in mind we decided to actually go into buildings and museums not just view them from the street like we do in Oxford. But before we could jump on tram 3 at Balebenka we enjoyed a hearty breakfast. Our hotel had the following offerings: Eggs, sausage, another kind of sausage, cheese, ham, salami, yoghurt, granolas, many breads, juice and some very strong coffee. All of that added up to a great start to the day, in fact we eliminated the need for lunch, of course we didn't leave the hotel till 10:30 anyway. So we rode the tram about 20 minutes into the city center and got off right in the heart of the action, near Wenceslass Square (more on that on Thursday) Since we were not in charge of anyone and had but one small deadline of a 1:45 tour to meet we simply wandered around, up and down streets, into a McDonalds to use the toilet (it cost 5 kc or about 15 cents, but you get it back if you bring a little reciept back to McDonalds in a week) and while in McD's I noticed that they sell beer with their value meals and I picked up a free map of Prague which proved to be quite helpful. After strolling through shops and backstreets we came upon the Old Town Square which is beautiful, old, and quite crowded by locals and tourists. We met Tom our guide who then showed us and 4 others some other famous buildings, talked about the difference between baroque, renaissance, and other period architechture. Prague has many periods of architechture because it has been around for so long. He led us down to the Vlatava river where we boarded a little boat which took us out for a ride and a look at the city from a river's view. This was great as you could see both sides of the river, and all of the different buildings, and sites of each side. By the time that we finished the boat ride we were starting to get tired, it doesn't sound like much walking took place but don't be fooled, you don't go to a large city and not walk your feet off. All of this walking made us hungry so we set out to find a traditional Czech restaurant. We ended up at one I think, it was very tasty, not goulash and dumplings but traditional none the less. We split a meal of huge potato pancake stuffed with meat and vegatables. The best way to describe it is to say a mix between a fajita, stir fry and stew all mixed up in a pancake, it was quite tasty. To the say the least we were full, and after riding back to our hotel we crashed by 10:00, I even took a nap at 8:00 and then could only make it till 10:00. Part of going away is relaxing and part of it is seeing the sites, we did both in a way, looking forward to Wednesday when we would go to a different part of the city.