This... is a long overdue post. I wrote this many months back, but only got around to writing about the first day. Fair warning: my memories of the trip has faded, so for the later part of this trip, I didn't add much content, just pictures. (On hindsight, I think I procrastinated because I had so many pictures and my Wi-Fi in Switzerland was not very stable so blogger kept giving me problems when I tried uploading the pictures and I just didn't want to undergo that unpleasant experience.)
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Remember my last minute decision to go to Prague?
Never mind if you don't! I went in late April for 3 days (Sun-Tues. Yes, I skipped my Monday class for this). It's a long story so here's the cliff notes version: Prague is a really beautiful city, its architecture is stunning and at night, the city is alive with music.
Switzerland
As my decision to go was really last minute, I booked separate flights to and from Prague from Zy and kath. It was a 6am flight from Geneva airport and since I didn't think taking the first train there from Renens gare (the station nearest to my place) was a good idea, I slept over at the airport instead. I reached there at 12.20am and found a seat in some empty cafeteria. There were some people around me who were seated there too. I didn't want to sleep since I didn't feel too safe not having anyone watching over my stuff, so I decided to study! However, when I was about to open my book, they switched off the lights! Imagine the look of annoyance on my face. Lol. Apparently the airport closes from 12-4am so I guess I understood the need to conserve electricity. Not all the lights were off though, so I could still study.
I grew really tired. I had to convince myself that it was alright to sleep. I placed my bags in a position such that I would definitely wake up if someone were to steal anything. No one was interested in stealing. Most people there were busy sleeping. At 2am, I was awoken by the sound of a shop gate opening. Indeed, a staff was walking into a shop (I forgot the name). Woah, what a hardworking boss/employee to be starting the day so early! I could hear 2 distinct snores although I couldn't identify the people snoring. I was too amused by the snoring that I decided to study again although not for long. I was too restless. So I went back to sleep eventually.
I woke up periodically. It was only when it was 4am that I decided to walk to the counter to check-in. I didn't see anyone there so I continued waiting... Till 4.40am! Then I queued. The counter read baggage drop off and self check in so I was kinda like.. 'Oh man do they not do check-ins?' Apparently they didn't! So i was told to go check-in myself at the machine which took less than a minute. It's my first time using the machine to check in and print boarding pass but I'm glad I overcame my fear of no human interaction (lol the irony when I'm doing artificial intelligence) by doing the self check-in.
The flight went really smoothly. We departed slightly before 6am. The plane was quite empty, probably because it's such an early flight. And no surprise there, since I'd only paid roughly 55 francs for this flight (Swiss air). I was given a window seat and was really happy about it. Then again, it was dark so there really wasn't much to see outside the window. I had nobody sitting beside me, but there was a guy sitting a seat beyond. When our plane took off, I immediately fell asleep and when I woke up, I realised that he had kept a croissant for me! It was really kind of him. Haha.
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| Croissant and apple juice |
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| Chocolate |
I think, because Swiss air isn't a budget airlines, I was served drinks and given chocolates for free. It's a really short flight (1.5 hrs) so I didn't expected there to be breakfast. My stomach must have been really happy. Hahah. So I talked to the nice guy seated at the aisle.
Him: no I'm from Czech, and you?
Me: oh. (Clearly I was misled by his well-spoken English) I'm from Singapore
Him: oh. (he hasn't heard of it) are you going on holiday?
And I asked him about his holiday in Switzerland. He told me about his trip to an ulu mountain to hike and mountain-climb. Lol. Damn adventurous!
Him: What are you studying? I saw you reading graph theory
Me: Wow, how do you know?
So apparently he's doing research in physics in the domain of graphene. (No wonder his English is good luh)
We talked the rest of the journey about his research, my activities in Prague and he gave me some ideas on what else to do in Prague.
Prague
Our plane landed early and I was supposed to meet Zy. After 10 mins of standing around, I gave up and found a seat. Then I watched a funny video, and laughed to myself. I think nobody cared. Haha. Zy was late and I was worried, but he came eventually, so all was well. We took the bus and then metro back to the apartment that we booked.
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| The apartment that we booked on airbnb |
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| Hallway |
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| Living area |
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| I was fascinated by this lol |
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| The other angle of the living area. The guys slept on the sofa bed |
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| Kitchen |
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| Bedroom that Kath and I shared |
It was cozy, and nicely decorated. Kath and xinwei were already back in the apartment (xw had reached by bus an hour earlier before me) so I quickly washed up and got ready for our day out.
The plan for the day was this:
- Brunch somewhere near the castle
- Prague castle
- Old town of Prague
- Dinner at a place Zy found with good reviews
- Catch the concert we booked at the Municipal House
- Walk around at night
We decided to scrap visiting the dancing place and also to go up the Prague's Eiffel Tower the next day instead since the weather was pretty crappy.
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| Station nearest to our apartment |
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| Very modern and clean right? |
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| Walking around finding brunch. This street has too many of the X signs! |
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| Tulips blooming. So pretty |
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| Stall selling trdelnik pastry |
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| zy and xw bought the pastry and I tried it. Tasted quite sweet, but the guys loved it. |
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| Random |
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| The men behind the counters tried to understand our English. haha oops |
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| Definitely way cheaper than in Switzerland |
Our brunch was at MacDonald's mainly because there was free Wi-Fi (although eventually none of us connected to it). As we were going to skip lunch, kath, Zy and I decided to eat mc flurry. I had kit kat flavored mc flurry which is really good. The kit kat gives the mc flurry the crunch, just like in Oreo mc flurry. Zy asked xw to help him get the mc flurry since he was lazy to do so.
Xw: what flavor do you want?
Zy: anything, you help me choose.
Me: the mc flurry here don't have strawberry one.
Xw: I go and see the options ba
Zy: *gives 55 crowns* it's 35 so you should return me 20
Lol in the end xw bought a milkshake smoothie in strawberry flavor for 35 and thought it was mc flurry. But Zy and xw both said it's nice so I guess it didn't matter that it wasn't mc flurry.
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| My proper meal |
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| Kit-kat McFlurry |
I also learnt that most of the toilets in Prague requires an entrance fee. The toilet in MacDonald's costed 10 crowns (That's slightly more than SGD 50 cents)! Apparently it's those kind of turnstile. So Zy and xw squeezed in together in order to pay less -.- Hahaha okay, it's actually pretty funny. I don't really support the idea of charging for toilet. It's not like people have a choice whether or not they want to go. In any case, because I am really against paying for using the toilet, I managed to not pay for them at all by drinking less water (super unhealthy) and always using the free toilet when we eat at restaurants.
After brunch, we started walking towards the Prague castle.
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| Pretty paintings and magnets. Quite costly though. Zy said he wanted to get a painting. I forgot if he did or didn't in the end |
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| Nice cars sia! |
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| Thought the shop's front was interesting |
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| I love the street lamps. Got the Victorian era feel |
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| Another interesting car |
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| Random. Don't know what building is this |
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| I think it's some kind of memorial |
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| Close-up |
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| Walking down the streets. Weather is looking fine |
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| Unfortunately, didn't enter |
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| Roads are quite wide |
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| I'm not sure why we stopped here. I think this could be an embassy? |
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| Climbing up to the castle |
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| View from near the castle |
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| Btw, have you noticed that all the roofs are red in colour? I'm not sure why though |
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| lol at all the people walking up |
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| The fake eiffel tower that we are going to visit the next day! |
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| So cool! |
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| Walking towards the gate of the castle |
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| Wait, there's an exhibition? |
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| I think the guys were quite fascinated |
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| In we go! |
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| Walking some more.. |
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| We were hoping to catch the changeover ceremony but I think it didn't happen because of the renovations. At least we caught this! whatever this is! |
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| Blur cos they were walking too fast |
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| Manage to get a sharp photo of their backs haha... |
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| The castle grounds is actually pretty huge. Like it's split into many different areas that you can enter |
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| We bought tickets that allowed us to enter certain buildings of the castle. |
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| Fountain |
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| St Vitus Cathedral peeping out |
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| St Vitus cathedral taken with my phone's camera |
The Prague castle was really worth visiting. I think the main highlight is the St Vitus cathedral located within the grounds. I won't go into details on the history and stuff because I'm no expert and also you can find that kind of information just by googling around. The cathedral looked weird to me in first glance as parts of it were really black (according to Zy it's due to the rain during the industrial period) while others were not as black (which probably suggest that they are newer).
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| Camera cannot take the full thing :( |
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| Sooo crowded |
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| lol zy was trying to photo-bomb so I decided to be nice and take one with him in the picture |
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| The actual photo that I wanted to capture |
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| I don't know what is this, probably some kind of memorial |
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| The newer portion of the cathedral.. Dark clouds are gathering and there were occasional flashes of lightning |
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| I think it looks super majestic |
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| Okay last shot |
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| This place looks like a hotel lol |
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| A painting of the castle (in olden days I suppose?) |
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| Inside I-can't-rmb-where |
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| Coat of arms |
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| Throne room of sorts? |
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| Crown jewel 1 |
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| Crown jewel 2. There's one more but I'm not gonna bore you |
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| Some portraits of royalty maybe? |
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| A view from a window |
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| A model of the castle |
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| Zy looking bored |
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| The backside of the cathedral |
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| Not sure what this is |
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| I see coins |
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| I am in love with the colour of this basilica! |
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| Zy agrees that it's nice! :P |
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| Too nice liao. Okay last shot |
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| Entering the basilica |
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| Okay this is the only photo I uploaded of the stuff in the basilica, because there are quite a lot of stuff to see! But I don't want to bore/spoil you... so moving on... |
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| Next attraction: Golden street. It's a street with lots of tiny houses, each featuring different things. Please google for more info as I'm also not sure! (I didn't research!) |
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| LOL @ zy's face |
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| Overpriced food |
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| Giving him a lot of air time |
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| So this is the street! |
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| This is house 24, the first house that we went in |
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| We were greeted by a knight |
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| They housed torture stuff here.. Quite gruesome to look at. |
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| Wah this chair.. I cannot imagine people sitting in it.... OUHH |
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| And then I saw what seems like dried blood? |
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| The plates are super nice. |
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| Old guns. This house is filled with weapons too.. |
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| I'm not sure what these are called cos the nose looks quite small for canon balls (unless there existed tiny canon balls?) |
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| This was taken in another house. I think it shows the past occupant's stuff |
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| Okay.. So I took photos of all the houses cos they were all unique |
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| This became a souvenir store |
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| In one of these shops, we met an ang moh who can speak mandarin with a Chinese accent. So scary. |
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| This is the little house of the psychic (who lived there before the 2nd world war) |
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| So many old discs... |
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| Finally out of the crowded and narrow golden street! |
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| Look at the vines! |
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| The view of Praha from here is pretty good |
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| LOL this pigeon kept following us around |
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| Zy went to feed it |
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| Then he asked me to get a shot of him with the bird feeding off his hand |
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| The clouds look very cool |
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| This was taken inside the private chapel |
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| Looks so holy |
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| We weren't allowed to take photos in certain places. But anw, this is my favourite portrait! |
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| Interesting read on Gargoyles |
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| Passed by this thing again, as we headed for the cathedral |
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| After learning about gargoyles, I think I can appreciate them a little better |
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| Inside the cathedral |
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| Lots of confessions have been told in that I suppose. I like the curtain's colour |
The weather was really bizarre that day. It rained on and off. It rained as we were exiting the cathedral even though it was sunny. When we got to the side of the cathedral which wasn't raining, we caught a magnificent view of the gargoyles draining water! Haha the rain was really a blessing in disguise.
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| Raining outside |
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| The gargoyles that were replaced don't really work. So you can tell which are the 'actual' gargoyles |
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| Quite amazing |
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| LOL zy being funny. I think other tourists who walked by found it amusing |
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| Last one |
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| At the shop, I was deciding amongst these three wooden postcards. In the end I bought two, one of which I gave to Eva! The other one I gave to my uncle. Pretty right? |
After spending 3-4 hours at the castle, we left to visit the old town. I don't rmb doing much there other than walking around and looking at the landmarks. Here are the pictures!
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| People actually rented segway :O |
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| We were walking on Charles bridge |
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| There were many artists lined up along the bridge offering their services to do caricature |
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| View from the bridge. I think the sunlight was hitting the buildings at the right angles. In my opinion, this picture is wallpaper worthy if not for the low resolution (took it with my phone!) |
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| Another picture from the bridge |
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| Ahh.. Not sure what this building is. |
Dinner was memorable. I ordered my first gnocchi... And didn't like it! Haha Zy ordered pork knee, kath ordered grilled pork and xw ordered pork ribs. Zy and xw were very nice to offer to eat and pay for my gnocchi so that I could order something else. Haha in the end both guys were defeated by the pig. They had a hard time finishing their dishes! 'Too much meat liao!'
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| Our dinner place! |
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| The gnocchi |
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| I can't rmb, but I think this was what I ordered to eat after the gnocchi |
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| My drink. Expensive, but nice. Later on, I realised Switzerland also got sell ._. |
Realizing that we were not assign seat numbers for the concert, we hurried to the concert hall in the hopes of getting a good seat (amongst the cheapest seatings). When we reached there, they had just opened the entrance and the crowd surged forward in a really civilized way. Lol we all joined the crowd. Kath met someone she knew there which was really coincidental!
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| Concert we were there for |
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| The Municipal House |
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| The crowd |
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| Nice stairs right! |
The interior of the concert hall was really nice (I'm secretly hoping the Vienna one will be nicer hehe). Our tickets had seat numbers and we had gotten row 3! Going into the concert hall, I was like 'Wow!' simply because I've never been in such a concert hall. The concert was short. It featured vivaldi's spring and summer, bach's air, Mozart piece, etc. I didn't feel that it was that worth the money considering it was a short performance (just shy of an hour) and the orchestra was so small (12 Players), but then again, I got the chance to be inside and well, as a student everything just seems expensive.
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| Walking in... |
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| I actually took a lot of photos, but I think if you google municipal house, you'll get nicer looking photos of the interior of the place! |
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| The players coming out! |
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| Any idea what is this instrument? |
During the concert, Zy closed his eyes and nodded. Kath thought he was sleeping and asked me to wake him. Hahaha just as I was about to, the piece ended and his eyes flew open. According to him, he nods if he hears a mistake. Lol and well, closing eyes doesn't equate to sleeping.
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| Night view |
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| Buskers! I seriously love Prague for its talented buskers |
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| LOL this limo |
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| I think this is a shopping mall. Didn't enter it though |
Kath wanted to go back as she had to Skype, so we parted ways. Before that though, we heard someone playing on a keyboard and singing in English. We walked nearer and there was a crowd enjoying this guy's music. He decided to play Coldplay's The Scientist. A group of guys, who were kind of drunk, happened to pass by and two of them started dancing to the music, they even gave the busker some money. Some of the rest of the guys knew the song so they started singing into the same mike as the busker. The busker was kinda pissed. He said 'guys, you're ruining my song!' Somehow, those drunk guys weren't offended at all, and just went away after patting him on the back. Lol. We stayed for another song before leaving.
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| People standing around listening to the busker |
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| The busker |
The night was young and we decided to just walk around. Prague has amazing nightlife, kinda similar to Singapore's. At 10pm, we caught the chiming of the astronomical clock together with lots of other tourists. The clock tower's really beautiful and reminded me of the one in Bern. The 'performance' was nothing really special and if you really want to know, you can google for it.
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| The astronomical clock at night! |
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| I like how it shines (or reflects light) |
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| This tower looks very pretty with the lighting |
Zy then brought us to a bar which sells this beer called X-33. He told xw it's a must try because it's really good albeit expensive. Haha at first xw was reluctant but he caved. I tried a little. It tasted sweet despite it having 12% alcohol, which is high for beer. It's definitely one of the better beers that I've tasted!
We were supposed to go to the ice pub (drinking in a super cold environment) but since everyone was really tired, we headed back. Back home, all of us just KO-ed. x.x
