We walked from our Hostel to Old Town Square, where we saw the famous Astronomical Clock built in 1410, with a clockwork hourly showing of the 12 Apostles. We stayed to watch it go off at noon, but since it is daylight savings time, the clock thought it was 11am...apparently they don't go around adapting clocks made in 1410 to reflect daylight savings. Go figure!
The clock:
The giant crowd that gathered to watch the clock go off:
The 12 Apostles coming to say hi:
After that we walked over to Charles Bridge, which is famous for being a pretty bridge. I didn't take any good photos of it, so this will have to do:
After that we saw the Lennon Wall! Here's a brief history from prague.net, "Lennon was a hero to the pacifist youth of Central and Eastern Europe during the totalitarian era. Prior to 1989 when communism ruled, western pop songs were banned by Communist authorities, and especially John Lennon´s songs, because it was praising freedom that didn’t exist here. When John Lennon was murdered in 1980 he became a sort of hero to some of the young and his picture was painted on this wall, for whatever reason right here, along with graffiti defying the authorities. The Communist police tried repeatedly to whitewash over the portrait and messages of peace but they could never manage to keep the wall clean. On the second day it was again full of poems and flowers with paintings of Lennon. Even the installation of surveillance cameras and the posting of an overnight guard couldn’t stop the opinions from being expressed."
Me adding to the wall:
Then we took the mountain car up to Petrin Tower, which is a mini Eiffel Tower on top of a hill overlooking Prague. We climbed it, and here's the view:
Old Town and Jewish Quarter:
Prague Castle:
After that we hiked town the hill and walked back downtown, where we found an American ex-pat to explain to us how to get to Prague Castle. He even ordered our bus tickets for us and told us where to wait and what bus number to catch.
We wandered the castle grounds, which is one of the biggest castles in the world, but didn't go into any of the museums because we didn't have much time.
After that, we walked over to the Jewish Quarter to see the Old Jewish Cemetery. The ticket to get in was the equivalent of ten dollars, so since we were too cheap to see the Jewish cemetery (ahahaha), we just walked up a staircase conveniently located next to it and snapped some free photos:
There are so many gravestones there because Jewish tradition does not allow Jews to destroy Jewish graves or remove tombstones. This meant that when the cemetery ran out of space and the Jews were not allowed to buy more space from the early 1400s to 1787, they added more soil and so the cemetery has 12 layers of graves. There are 12,000 visible tombstones and up to 100,000 graves.
After that we headed home, because we had plans to go clubbing with our Swedish roommates! We ate pizza for dinner and pre-gamed with some red wine named after my mom:
...and then headed to the largest club in Central Europe!! It had FIVE STORIES of dance floors, and was amazing. The floor we spent the most time at was playing oldie American songs, like Blue Suede Shoes, Walkin' on Sunshine, Don't Stop Believin', Grease medleys, Time of My Life, and other amazing dance-able, singable songs. We spent most of the time dancing with a group of American guys and a group of Australian guys...Kim has the photos, sorry to disappoint!
Since Kim and I had to catch a 10:30am train, we left at the very reasonable time of 4am. By the time we got back to the hostel, the sun was up and it was daytime! We got 3 hours of sleep but that's okay because it was AMAZING
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