day fifteen . 15 may

praha, czech republic

today was a day where we explored prague on foot. starting with prague castle (hrad prazsky) we spent the entire morning just walking around the castle, from the halls to the cathedrals, to the famous golden lane. being the cheapo us, we decided to share one audio guide. hence, the person who was listening at any one time had to narrate it to the other 2.


wenceslas square, prague's shopping street, just 2 blocks away from our hostel


climbing up hrad prazsky

great view

claiming the title as one of the largest castles in the world, i must say i wasn’t too impressed. for one, the place was packed with tourists. that alone was enough to put me off. but just as you thought it cant get any worst, try walking down charles bridge on a summer afternoon. it is disgusting. Bbt that was not before we walked through mala strana, also known as the lesser town.

golden lane

view of charles bridge

as I was saying, charles bridge was so jam-packed that it was impossible to take any pictures without people’s heads in your way. and with all the construction going on, the place was dusty and way too narrow to accommodate the hordes of tourists all trying to get on the bridge.

charles bridge

i, personally, am disappointed with prague. maybe it has to do with the large number of tourists swarming the city. maybe it is the fact that the entire place is just too touristy, with all the souvenir shops, hawker stalls. maybe it’s the exorbitant prices they charge for the places of interest.

after finally getting to the other side of the bridge, we grabbed a bite at a local bakery. as we were already in josefov (jewish area) den, the prices became drastically cheaper. pastries costs as little as 16kc, which works out to be less den 0.80eur.

however, finding out that the admission ticket to visit the jewish cemetery and synagogue was a whopping 200kc (8eur) wasn’t good news. i was so irritated that they packaged everything together, and refused to sell us separate tickets just for the cemetery. as it started raining quite heavily at that time, we decided to give the place a miss, and head straight to the old town.

stare mesto

stare mesto is the very place which inspired the jolin tsai’s song – 布拉格广场. but I think it was seeing it that was the final straw. the skies were so overcast, and it began pouring the very moment we entered the square. didn’t help that having been to many other cities before this, i have to say that there really isn’t anything so fantastic about this particular old town square.

as the rain got heavier, we didn’t have a choice but to seek shelter in one of the cafés around the square.

overcast skies did nothing to help lift the dampen spirits

when the skies cleared, we walked around abit more, and headed over to nove mesto – wenceslas square, which is really more a boulevard den a square. it’s a nice bustling shopping street (like many others i have seen) although the rain made the street seem less impressive den it would probably have been.

making our way to this restaurant recommended by let’s go was no easy feat. i led everyone to make a wrong turn, so we ended by walking more than necessary. still, the restaurant is worth every bit of the walking we did, coz it was really cheap.

kudos to let's go for the great recommendation!

that night, we met 3 girls from singapore in our hostel.