orvieto a tutti: prague

prague is a truly amazing and beautiful city. last post i left off with us leaving venice. we woke up saturday morning and after some breakfast at the hotel we left to walk to where the bus would meet us to take us 45 minutes to a small airport outside of venice back on the peninsula. the airport was extremely small to what i have always been used to. when boarding we walked ( on the tarmac ) to the plane and boarded via a stair case. when we landed in prague we were all surprised how cold it was ( luckily that was the coldest it was during our trip ). getting to the city center from the airport involved a bus, subway, and some walking. we finally got into our hostel and got settled. our hostel was located only a few block away from the main street in the city center so we decided to walk up and down the street and get dinner at one of the stands along the way. the food was an nice change of pace from the usual pasta. every stand had 4 to 5 different types of sausage. all types where pretty amazing. another popular street stand food is fried cheese. they take what looks like a chicken patty of cheese and throw it in a deep fryer, put it on a bun, and cover it in whatever topping you want; yea, incredible. everyone i had talked to before leaving could not stop talking about the food and the beer. now that we had the food out of the way we turned our attention to trying all types of local beer and, as i expected, all were amazing. later that night nick and i headed to one of the ( what seemed like ) 10,000 casinos along the main street. i had never gambled but i figured i would give it a shot. i ended up winning two times in a row playing roulette and figured i would quit. the next day we got up and set our sites on charles bridge, the castle, main cathedral, and old town square of prague.

after getting somewhat of a late start we began walking to charles bridge. on the way we stopped to see a building done by frank gehry. eh. the area seemed somewhat empty until we got close the the charles bridge. once we crossed the bridge we began climbing up a steep road towards the castle and cathedral. the view back on prague from the castle is pretty amazing. the cathedral of st. vitus is situated as a part of the castle and is amazing. construction on the gothic cathedral began in the 1300's and took over 600 years to complete. after walking around the cathedral we began or walk down ( crossing the river again ) back to the old town square. when we first got there we were surprised with a yearly town festival that was ending that day. nick and i each got a huge helping of goulash and a beer to wash it down. we hung out here and watched the astronomical clock and resumed exploring the rest of the city. that night we found some small pubs and met up with the other group of 4 traveling in prague. for our last day we decided we would go find some modern architecture and head to the main university of prague. we walked around the new technical library of prague first and we all really enjoyed the building. after the library we went to the architecture building to see what kind of project they were working on... after exploring the school we decided to head back to the cathedral and town square. that night nick and i got a cigar and walked around prague with the girls and took it pretty easy. we had to get up the next day and catch a train to munich...