Tour of Prague

During my mom's week in Prague, we did a lot of exploring around the city. We also took a pretty good 3.5 hour tour of the main parts of the city and the weather ended up being really nice. The city is also so pretty at night with the reflection on the water.

     

On our tour we went across the river to go up by Prague Castle. 

"According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the Prague Castle is the largest coherent castle complex in the world with an area of almost 70000 m², being 570 meters in length and an average of about 130 meters wide"

The view from the mountain behind the castle

We also have a mini Eiffel Tower called the Petrin Lookout Tower, which is 1/5 the size of the Eiffel Tower and heavily resembles it.

At the Prague Castle there are guards and every hour they do the changing of the guards and at 12 everyday they have a very big changing of the guards and a lot of people go to watch.

Next to Prague Castle is St. Vitus' Cathedral, which is the site of many Bohemian Kings' tombs.

After the tour of the Castle we went to OLD TOWN SQUARE, which I think is the most beautiful part of Prague. It used to be surrounded by a moat that connected to the river, but now the moat is covered with the street. It's also the most heavily populated with tourists and pickpockets. At Old Town Square is the astronomical clock which is also called Prague Orloj. It's located on the Old Town City Hall building. In the background of the astronomical clock, is the church of our Lady of Tyn, which was built in the 14th century. 

After Old Town Square we grabbed lunch and headed toward the Charle's Bridge. The bridge is only for pedestrians and so there is a lot of local artists and bands on the bridge during the day. The sun came out and it was beautiful.

After reaching the other side we visited the Lennon Wall and walked around the little island that's located right by the bridge. 

Lennon Wall, Prague

The Lennon wall in Prague was once a regular wall... until one day in the 80's a bunch of young people decided to turn it into a creative outlit for Beatle's songs and John Lennon quotes... and it really pissed those communists off and caused a clash between the students and the communist soldiers.

"The movement these students followed was described ironically as "Lennonism" and Czech authorities described these people variously as alcoholics, mentally deranged, sociopathic, and agents of Western capitalism."

There are layers and layers of paint, quotes and drawings on the wall and it's really cool to see. Today the wall represents love and peace to the people of Prague.

 

 

 

 

 

Right around the corner are the love padlocks. Lovers put a lock on the fence, lock it and throw the key into the Vltava river... really cute :)

Food poisoning! Prague

On Monday March 6th, Mom and I went to Radost FX, a vegetarian restaurant in Prague. It's well known for being the site of Rihanna's music video Don't Stop the Music.... but it's well known to me as the place that gave me FOOD POISONING. So needless to say, monday and tuesday, I was bedridden and severely sick for over 24 hours, not fun!

Budapest, Hungary

On Saturday March 5th, my mom and I left Vienna very early on a bus tour that brought us a couple of hours away to Budapest, Hungary. The city was once two separate cities, Buda and Pest, separated by the river Danube. But now it's just one big city joined by many bridges and of course it's the capital of Hungary.

In those photos, the Buda side is on the side of the camera and the side we're looking at is the Pest side with the Parliament, which by the way is the biggest building ever!

We started our tour by going to the Buda Castle, which was built in 1265 and is a World Heritage Site. Katy Perry filmed one of her lastest music videos Firework here.. a song that reached #1 at the end of 2010!

On "Castle Hill" there was also the really beautiful Fisherman's Baston. It was built in 1900 and has 7 towers.

There were some other cool things on castle hill too:

Matias Church was right by the Fisherman's Baston and was really beautiful. The roof of it was spectacular!

From Buda Castle you could see Parliament across the water. Up close, the Parliament building seemed to never end as you drove by!

We also saw St. Steven's Basilica which was really beautiful on the inside, as well as on the outside!

Mom thought she'd go to confession, haha.

The streets of Budapest were really great as well. They sold a lot of hand sewn items as you can see in the second photo.

The tour bus dropped us off like a mile away from the Hero's Square, which is dedicated to the leaders of the 7 tribes, which founded Hungary in the 9th century along with other historically important Hungarian figures. 

And then we had some free time so we walked around and went out onto one of the many bridges. It was a really great day.

Mistletoe in the trees!