Seeing The World One Country At A Time: Prague, Czech Republic

Eric on our first night with our Czech money. The seven $1000 bills in this picture only equals $350 US dollars

We were able to spend 3 awesome days in Prague (pronounced PRAHA) over Labor day weekend. It is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. From the historical buildings to the signature red roofs, Prague was an absolutely beautiful city. After following the directions from a misbehaving garmin, we arrived in Prague around 12:30am, a little later than planned. We checked into the hotel and made it out for one drink before calling it a night.The next morning, after a great breakfast at the hotel, we went to ask the front desk clerk for any ideas of what we should do while here. We were told just to hit the ground running by foot.That was the best advice we could have received and I will gladly pass this information on to anyone planning a trip to Prague. We got out a map and decided to make our way past the Powder Tower, walk through Old Town Prague, walk across the St. Charles Bridge and end our day at Prague Castle. We considered taking a bike tour the first day but we are extremely glad we didn't as Prague is an extremely walkable city. We walked out of our hotel, made a left, and within 10 minutes, we were at the gothic looking Powder Tower. It was built in 1475 as one of Prague's 13 original city gates. It was originally called Mountain Tower until the start of the 17th century when it was used to store gun powder, hince the name change to Powder Tower.


Approaching Powder Tower

View of Prague from the top of the tower


At the bottom of Powder Tower with the knight...or whatever he is

The tower marked the entrance to Old Town Prague. It was crowded but it was not the kind of crowd that hindered you from seeing what you want to see and doing what you want to do.

Old Town Square

We stopped at the famous Astronomical Clock. The clock dates back to 1410 and was built by a clock maker whose name I can't pronounce, let alone spell.


View from Old Town Prague right before we walked over the St. Charles bridge. You can see Prague Castle int he background.


After we crossed the St. Charles bridge, I looked down and had to get a picture of Prague's Open Arm-wrestling competition.


Exiting the bridge about to walk through the arches

The front of "castle village"

Now for the best part of the trip. After exiting the Castle Village, we stumbled across a wine festival going on at the top of a hill that overlooked all of Prague. For 150 crowns ($7.50 US), we received 5 tokens, each of which got you a FULL glass of wine. This stop at the wine festival certainly was not planned but was a very welcome addition.


View from the festival

Feeling very happy from using up our 5 tokens each, we made our way back down towards our hotel where we showered and headed off to local place for dinner that was recommended to us. After a failed attempt to attend a beer festival, we decided to call it a night.
We were able to cover all of Prague on foot the first day so our second day was a little more relaxed and we just enjoyed re-visiting some of our favorites spots of Prague. We did come across a fashion show going on down the "Rodeo Drive" of Prague.