Prague with Claire

June 30 
I woke up early to finish packing (sent my softball stuff home with the team) and then headed into the city to meet my friend, Claire. It was definitely an odd feeling to not have any communication capability to reach her and to just trust that we would both be in our designated spot at the right time. We were meeting in the hostel, so it seemed easy enough. And she was there--I was SO happy to see her and was definitely looking forward to spending time with her. 

We had already decided to do a walking tour when we were planning our trip. It started at 11:00, and it was wonderful. I love the Sandeman tour company, having done many of its tours in other cities when I studied abroad. I had been seeing the buildings all week and now I know some history and good stories. I learned that the designer of the clock had his eyes cut out so he could never design another one, and then he threw himself into the gears and the clock stopped for 30 years. Kinda gory, but interesting. We walked all through the city and it never ceased to amaze me. Prague was one of the few cities relatively untouched by WWII, but there were still a lot of sobering stories. Claire and I made some friends on our tour: Pat, a first year law student,  Craig, a 30 something year old accountant following Pearl Jam, and Tyler, a recent Maryland grad. It was fun to hear about their travel stories and plans.

After the tour, our newly formed clique wandered around the town looking for souvenirs and then decided to walk to a beer garden our guide had recommended. Our guide had neglected to mention the hundreds of stairs you have to climb to get to the top of the hill, but the view was worth it. On top of the hill is a giant metronome which represents the time taken from Prague because of Communism. We finally made it to the beer garden, an oasis in the 90+ degree weather. I had been hearing about lemon beer during my time in Prague so I tried one. Really low alcohol content, but SO tasty and the grapefruit version was even better. After the beer garden, we wandered along the river to the Charles Bridge and the group split up with the plan to meet up later for a pub/bar crawl.  Claire and I were excited to have a girls' dinner and we found an inexpensive Italian restaurant. It was a fun dinner just chatting about life.

We headed back to the hostel to get ready for the night, trying to escape the heat for a little while.  At 8:30, we headed to the meeting spot and were whisked away by the leader to the first bar, the Vodka Bar. It was open bar for the crawlers, although the drinks were pretty weak. Pat and Tyler showed up, joined by Tyler's two friends. From then on, we stuck together for the night. We crawled to the next two bars, (very hot and crowded!), and eventually split from the tour to seek a Czech delicacy we had heard about several times: fried cheese! Dangerously good. After that, we headed to the bridge and hung out for some time. It had finally cooled down so it was really pleasant outside. It was so much fun, and I know we will probably never see each other again, but my new friends made for a pretty awesome night! We separated with promises of Facebook friendships and headed home. Finally back to the hostel and I fell asleep right as my head hit the pillow, and I didn't wake up until 9 the next morning. The free ear plugs definitely did their job.

July 1
Claire and I had made plans to meet Pat at 10 in front of the clock to go see the castle. We saw the clock in action (the skeleton rings the bell, the other puppets shake their heads, puppets appear in the top windows, a rooster cries, and a trumpeter plays a tune), and we took off. It was already hot at 10:30, and the hill to the castle was pretty steep. We saw the castle buildings which I had seen several days before but it was still amazing. We popped our heads into a room in St. Vitus's Cathedral and found out we could climb 287 steps to the top of one of the cathedral towers for $6, so we did it. (made me feel less guilty about the fried cheese!) I'm so glad we did this because the view was the best we had seen. We could walk around the whole tower and see the city in all directions. Simply amazing and the breeze was pretty nice after the climb. 

After the dizzying descent, we meandered back into the town below the castle, saw the Wallenstein Gardens, then headed to the John Lennon wall and went back toward the main part of town. The three of us had a nice sit down lunch at an outdoor restaurant. After some more souvenir shopping, we split from Pat, saying our probably permanent goodbyes. This experience gave me hope for finding friends the days I'm alone in Munich!  Claire and I then packed up our things at the hostel and started walking toward the bus station. We walked through Wenceslas Square and stopped for ice cream.

We decided to head to the train station a little early to make sure we knew what we were doing. Made it to the right place, got some road snacks to spend the rest of our korunas, and hopped on the bus to Munich! We hit some bad traffic early on, but the rest of the ride was smooth sailing. It was long, but it's easy to stay entertained just looking out the window. Claire and I talked, played the old school game, Mash, listened to music and finally we arrived, around an hour late. We found our hostel and after getting our bearings, it was suddenly 11:30, and we had plans to wake up early tomorrow to go see Neuschwanstein Castle. Bed time for us in our nice 4 bed room with our own bathroom!