Instead of posting part 1 before part 2, I will do it the other way round so that readers can read in sequential order. Hopefully there's no confusion.
Here's the link to Part 1.
- Breakfast
- Petrin Tower (fake Eiffel Tower)
- Crepes for lunch
- Market selling lots of stuff like clothes, household items, bags, etc.
- Market selling cheap souvenirs
- Pedal boat
- Dinner with live music
We had breakfast in the house. Kath bought breakfast for us the previous night.
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| Eating the thing that isn't bread |
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| I thought the curtains and table mat both look very nice for photo-taking. haha |
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| The loooong escalator down to the train platform. We timed it, I think it was about 1 and a half minutes? |
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| My travelling companions! :D |
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| Random street shot |
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| Tram that we took |
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| Queuing to take the funicular up Petrin hill |
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| The funicular stopped halfway. Zy and kath, who took it previously before xw and I arrived told us that it's because of squirrels. |
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| There's actually a midway point before the Petrin stop. It's for people who want to stroll through the gardens |
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| I spy the Prague castle |
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| The funicular was very crowded (rmb the queue at the station? D:) |
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| It was very misty in the morning |
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| Petrin tower. Zy told me it's known as the fake eiffel tower haha. |
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| At least we get to climb all the way to the top of the tower! |
Next will be the views from the top of the tower. I won't try to caption them because I noticed that I tend to take the same stuff (from different heights of the tower). Also, since it's quite misty, most of the pictures are not that nice la (some suffered from overexposure).
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| Zy and me. Pic taken by xw :) |
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| Going down... |
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| and down... |
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| They have chairs along the stairs for you to rest if you need to |
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| Inside the observing platform. We could go out to the 'balcony'. Also, we saw this postcard machine which prints nice landmarks of Prague, so we decided to use it! |
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| Relatively empty funicular. The funicular stopped again somewhere in the middle. This time round they told me it's squirrels again but I was like huh but we stopped at this exact place previously. Why the squirrels block the same part of the road twice? It's just too coincidental.. Well.. guess what? They lied to me ._. No squirrels. |
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| Went to this place for lunch cos I mentioned that I wanted to eat crepes. The rest were quite nice to oblige |
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| Oh this round thing... it's a very common street food. Rmb zy/xw had it the day before? |
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| All of our crepes |
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| Pictures of the food taken with my phone. the lighting was quite bad la, and in this picture I was trying to make the crepe look nice, but I think I failed. |
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| I remembered that the crepe wasn't as nice as I'd expected it to be. It was decent though. A little too pricey given the taste, I'd say. |
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| Street graffiti. Nice leh! |
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| I think they are actually not from Prague (they look Asian), but came all the way to Prague to get wedding photos? |
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| I think this is Prague old town hall tower (sorry ah, I didn't really do my research before I went there, so I'm not sure what it's called) It looks so much nicer in the morning in my opinion! No eerie glow hahaa |
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| Astronomical clock in the morning. So pretty! |
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| Next we decided to visit the street market for souvenirs |
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| I didn't really dare to take photos of what they were selling up close cos I was scared that the vendors are not happy about that. lol |
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| I think if my grandma were around, she would have bought one of those dolls/puppets! |
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| Name of this street market. It's actually quite small and also, Prague's souvenirs in general are quite expensive. |
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| Astronomical clock again. I think at this point in time, zy and xw went to climb the astronomical clock's tower and xw got very nice shots of the opposite tower + square from above |
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| kath and I chilled at starbucks where we could get free wi-fi while we waited for them. |
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| Horses! |
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| This is my best shot of the clock. Dk how to read it though! It keeps reminding me of the Bern's astro clock which is red in colour |
Fun facts: According to Wikipedia, Prague's astro clock was first installed in 1410, making it the third-oldest astronomical clock in the world and the oldest one still working.
The background represents the Earth and the local view of the sky. The blue circle directly in the centre represents the Earth, and the upper blue is the portion of the sky which is above the horizon. The red and black areas indicate portions of the sky below the horizon. During the daytime, the Sun sits over the blue part of the background and at night it sits over the black. During dawn or dusk, the mechanical sun is positioned over the red part of the background.
Golden Roman numbers at the outer edge of blue circle are the timescale of a normal 24-hour day and indicate time in local Prague time, or Central European Time. Curved golden lines dividing the blue part of dial into 12 parts are marks for unequal "hours". These hours are defined as 1/12 of the time between sunrise and sunset, and vary as the days grow longer or shorter during the year.
So interesting. For more information, go to
wikipedia!
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| lol the streets are crowded with tourists I think. I can't really tell the difference >< |
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| Walking on the streets of the old town |
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| I'm too lazy to artificially brighten this photo. In fact, I'm too lazy to process any of the photos so all photos are untouched. |
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| I thought the wooden structures were quite interesting. It's probably a dam? |
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| Walking along the river(?) |
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| This pic a bit blur ah. But anyway wanted to show the important landmarks across the river |
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| Charles bridge! My picture is not doing it justice. hahaha |
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| Does it look like I'm in the middle of the road?? :D |
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| Pedal boats |
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| Spying on a couple |
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| I like how the sunlight reflects off the water so nicely |
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| LOL if you see carefully, you'll see zy and kath walking way in front. xw and I were too busy taking photos so we lagged quite far back |
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| Walking towards the pedal boat rental.. |
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| One last shot of the buildings. So pretty right! |
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| The picture clearly marks out where we can paddle. And before that we were discussing how much pedal boats will cost. Apparently the cost was much lower than what we expected so we decided to go for it! |
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| Beginning our journey. Since zy got boat license, I guess we just let him handle the boat. Also xw and I were quite lazy, so kath and zy did the pedaling haha :X |
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| idk what's the name of this bridge |
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| Looking back |
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| Going under the bridge... |
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| Yay we tunneled through :P |
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| Charles bridge from afar |
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| We were like omg zy don't stand on the boat, later the boat capsize. hahaha but in the end the boat didn't and everyone got more daring and stood on the boat to take photos. This said, we were actually very very careful. |
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| Eh idk why I kept taking photos of bridges. And I think this is where Samson would have told me, too much focus on water, aim your camera higher! |
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| Me chilling and lying backwards. Zy opened a bag of chips to share. Such is the life. Just need to use your imagination to turn the pedal boat into a yatch and chips into wine. hahaha |
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| I think this is my best river shot! |
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| Prague castle poking out |
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| Don't know what I'm taking here |
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| Here, you can see the fake eiffel tower in the far distance |
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| This one.. quite scary. Xw was leaning over to my side and kath was at the front so we really tried to balance out the weights |
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| Yay! |
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| LOL I took the same buildings again. In my defense, the boat moves quite slowly so the sights don't change much. |
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| Cloud-watching |
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| Sun is setting... |
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| Heading to the unexplored side of the river(?) |
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| Sunset! |
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| I think if I'd shifted my camera a bit higher, this pic would have been much nicer! |
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| The moon is so noticeable! |
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| Water looks dirty |
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| Heading back liao |
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| Guy waiting for us. lol |
Zy wanted to experience eating at a place with live band and the rest of us thought it was nice to experience it too so we looked for a place like it. I think we happened to walk by this restaurant where customers didn't need to pay for the music, just the food. So we entered.
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| That's the name of the restaurant printed on the menu |
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| The restaurant didn't have many English menus so we had to share. Here's the page for mains. I ordered the duck |
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| There's an outdoors area. We were quite lucky that we decided not to sit outdoors because it rained later on lol. |
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| The musicians. They came to our table and performed for us so we felt compelled to tip them. Also, I recorded their performance so yeah I think that really warrants a tip. |
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| So much alcohol |
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| I think when we first entered it was quite early so not many customers yet. Anw I took this pic to show you guys the interior of this place! |
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| Xw and kath :D |
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| The duck that I ordered with steamed buns and cabbage. I rmb that the cabbage was quite sour and I didn't have enough dumplings (honestly, I'll just call it bread) to go with the cabbages |
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| With flash |
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| Getting ready for our we-fie! |
xw took the overnight bus back (if I didn't rmb wrongly), so there was just zy, kath and me left in the morning. Zy's and kath's flight was slightly earlier than mine, so I decided to just head to the airport with them together. Also because it was raining, I was too lazy to explore the city. I can't rmb what I did at the airport to pass time but most likely I studied or wrote about the trip. haha.
My flight back to Switzerland was not direct. I took Brussels airlines and I had a layover in Brussels. During that time, I went shopping for chocolates (LOL) and souvenirs. Oh yeah I was quite surprised that they spoke French in Brussels (cos I thought they speak German).
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| Prague's airport |
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| Stoning in the waiting area |
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| Leaving Prague |
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| Clouds |
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| AHHH clouds look so flufffffy |
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| Landing in Brussels |
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| Their houses look so cute from above |
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| Brussels airlines |
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| Saw this vintage-looking car at the airport |
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| Leaving Brussels |
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| Many small and cute houses :O |
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| One day... I will return! |
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| haha everyone's sleeping! |
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| Oh this was when we were nearing Switzerland already. So cool right! I don't know what mountain peak is that though |
Thanks to zy, I got to know xw and kath on this trip. I'm also indebted and grateful to kath and especially xw for putting me up at their place in Zurich for a number of occasions! I don't think I'll be going back to Prague any time soon as I have my eyes set on other Eastern European countries. Xw has gone back to Prague since this trip and he'll probably want to visit it again soon as it is his favourite city!
