Ambling Ramblings #17-'Purfect Prague'

Warning: According to Marnie, her blogs are the storybook version of our travels, while mine are the encyclopedia/novel versions so if you want a more condensed and entertaining recount of our adventures, please head over to her blog (marnie-abroad) and save yourself from having to scroll all the way to the bottom of my blog to get to the interesting story!

We arrived in Prague fairly late in the evening, but thanks to Marnie's fantastic navigating skills, we made it to out hotel incident free (she has finally learned to not listen to me-I would have sent us in the wrong direction entirely and we never would have got there!). Our hotel itself provided us with much entertainment-even the name (Hotel Purpur) made us giggle! The decor of the hotel is bright pink-a rather uncommon colour scheme in a hotel! We were upgraded to a triple room when we arrived, so it was nice to have a bit of extra space (and an extra bed to dump all our paraphernalia on!) but the highlight of our room for me was that we didn't just have a kettle, but we had a little kitchenette! I thoroughly enjoyed being domestic again and cooked dinner, washed dishes and played 'house' (Marnie seemed all too willing to leave the cooking to me so I had fun experimenting and improvising with our 4 saucepans, 3 place settings and 2 hotplates). On our first night I made soup using some things we had brought with us, and then the next day we went grocery shopping so that I could make a pasta dish and then a rice casserole, both with lots of veggies in them,-it was very nice to eat 'home cooked meals' and to eat off a plate with cutlery! 
Outside of the hotel, Prague is a charming city, situated on a river (as most old cities are) with beautiful buildings with ornate windows and doors, winding streets, statues of famous heroes from years gone by and of course, it's fair share of steeples, churches, bridges, town squares and even a castle thrown in to even out the mix! I took aver 300 photos on our first day of exploring-I think that's a record for me! 
On our first full day, we went walking through Old Town, finding lots of beautiful little shops selling exquisite Bohemian crystal amongst other things, as well as seeing Wenceslas Square, the Astronomical Clock, which is well worth waiting for it to chime on the hour-first a bell rings, and then images of the apostles parade around the top of it, a golden bird 'cuckoo's' and then a horn player trumpets from the top of the tower-all in all, the chiming process takes about 5 minutes! We then walked to the river and along the Charles Bridge (which is very, very old)  and saw many other old buildings that we assume are significant, but are not sure what their stories are! Methinks I will have some research to do when I get home in order to find out about all of the things that I have seen. 
The next day, we made our way to Prague Castle which is situated on a hill-it was quite a steep climb to get up to the castle complex, which is quite extensive, having a large gothic cathedral and numerous other buildings which we enjoyed wandering around. The views of the city from the castle complex were well worth the climb as Prague is indeed a lovely city. We then went shopping as we had converted some Euros into Czech Crowns and since we can't use them anywhere else, we thought the best thing to do would be to spend them! We spent quite a few hundred Crowns on beautiful scarves alone, as well as buying a few other little things, but the scarf shopping was by far the most fun! Our only dilemma was narrowing down the selection as they were all so lovely (and scarves are my one weakness!). 
We did learn one important thing in the Czech Republic-a country where neither of us knows any of the language, which did make us feel somewhat alienated but we got by and just smiled a lot (at least smiling is fairly universal!). We learned that just because you are in a foreign speaking country, you cannot assume that the people around you don't speak English. On the train to Prague, Marnie and I were engaged in a very girly discussion, about very girly topics which we continued even when we were joined in our compartment by a Czech gentleman whom we assumed didn't speak English as he greeted us in Czech and didn't seem to understand our 'hello'. This very innocent, but extremely girly conversation lasted for well over an hour and covereed numerous topics (not a difficult feat for us girls!) until the train stopped and the gentleman rose to leave, saying in very clear English 'thank you for allowing me to travel with you in the compartment. I wish you a pleasant journey'. Marnie and I just stared at each other and then (after he had left the carriage) burst into laughter and giggled for the rest of the way to Prague! (Note to self, confine yourself to sensible conversations in train carriages, even when you are far away from English speaking countries! Thankfully, we won't ever have to see him again!) Hopefully we have learned our lesson....for now....let's see what adventures we can have on our next journey!

If you chose to read on, regardless of my warning at the top, I congratulate you and thank you for your time and effort!