(162-166): Prague Blog!

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It rhymes! Get it...? Why, yes, I am six years old.

There is one small but significant event I have to open with. While I was in Prague, somebody bumped into me and knocked my camera out of my hand. It then ceased to turn on.

Now, reading that, you'd think most sane people wouldn't make such a big deal about such a little thing. There are, however, three things I ask you to consider about what you'd think:

1.) This is a blog. What function do these poor little rambling websites have other than making a big deal about little things?
2.) I openly confess to being an American tourist. However, I also take great pleasure in framing my shots as well as I can and taking pictures of little reminders and oddities, in addition to the popular sites. Picture-taking has become my favorite hobby while I've been travelling.
3.) I am not sane.

The long and short of it is that my touristic habits were rather disrupted by my efforts to repair/replace my 2½-years-faithful Canon SD1000. As a result, I didn't get to know or photograph this beautiful old city* as well I would have liked. But, also as a result, I am now packing a beautiful new camera that is just like the old one, only better in virtually every way.

Here are the photos from Prague.

(162) was my mother's birthday: Thursday, 17 June 2010.

PlusPrague is a sweet hostel... very cheap (8 USD per night), clean and bright, great staff, welcome drinks and other niceties... the only problem is its relatively remote location, exacerbated by the early-to-bed-early-to-rise subway system.**

I made my way to Dancing House, located here. This is the other Frank Gehry building I foreshadowed in the Berlin entry. The building (which I love) was designed to evoke an image of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing. I also understand that the former Czech president used to live in the adjacent building. As I continued walking, I decided I was already taken with this beautiful city; its weather and buildings are beautiful (so many gorgeous facades).

One thing I forgot to mention about the transportation system in Prague is that a hefty part of it is a network of above-ground trams. I have a love-hate relationship with trams. On one hand, I find them incredibly charming, and Prague's are particularly quaint (in a good way). I have no problem with the trams themselves, but the suspended wires required to power them are constantly in the way of my building facade pictures.

My next stop was The Globe, located here. This is an English-language bookstore and cafe. I know you think I'm silly for getting into Prague and basically heading right for something I could find in the states, but I can defend this one. This is a pretty famous expat spot, and browsing books and eating at their cafe made me really feel like an expat (in the cool, literary way) for the first time since I'd been abroad. Also, their food is quite good; I hadn't had a bacon cheeseburger that good (or that reasonably priced) in a while, and the peanut butter cheesecake I ordered after was outstanding. I didn't necessarily mean to stay long, but from book browsing to eating to book browsing to starting a conversation with a cute Czech girl to listening to live music in the cafe to more book browsing... I left around 10 PM, smiling from a great evening.

(163) is Friday, 18 June 2010.

One reason I chose to go to Prague was to celebrate the birthday of Kaysey Grard, a friend I met through Kirill in Paris. She had been getting a group together and I figured it would be fun to have a core group of people to hang out with for a change. So, when Kaysey and Kristi showed up, we went to the Chinese Market near our hostel. Kallie, just showing up from the train station, joined us and we browsed. This market is another place to haggle and they have a lot of knickknacks and stuff.

We got some food and drinks before going out to a few bars that night in the name of Kaysey's birthday. And one place played an amazing remix of "Baker Street" by Gerry Rafferty. The remix is here.

Honestly, the biggest thing that happened the next day was that I realized I would be in Antibes in a week's time.

(165) is Sunday, 20 June 2010.

I got up early to go look for a new camera. The stores all said the damage would be as expensive to fix as a new camera, and while I didn't believe them, I doubted any store was going to tell me differently and I needed to start taking pictures again STAT. Plus, if I was going to buy a new camera in a store in Europe, chances are good I wouldn't get much better prices than I would in Prague.***

I ultimately didn't find a camera I liked, but while wandering around the area near the big camera shop, I found this really cool shopping mall that reminded me of the railway station in the beginning of Spirited Away. It had a really cool, eerie feel to it on a cloudy Sunday morning. It has an antique feel the color of old paper and several cool stores (including a store full of old cameras). Also, I don't think its layout obeys Euclidean geography, because the various exits spit you out onto streets you don't expect in a downright baffling way.

At one point today, I felt like I was running out of steam... I've been on the road for a month, going to several extremely different places for a few days at a time. When I travel, I keep up a certain professionalism about it, a certain courtesy toward each city and the time I spend there. I plan as much as I can: how to get to the hostel, a few things I want to see while I wander, a few restaurants TripAdvisor says are good... I try to minimize the time spent online because I shouldn't waste my precious time in X-ville or Y-lin. But I am ready to spend some time doing nothing and not feel guilty about it.

On the other hand, Ristorante Carmelita was great. It may not be traditional fare, but it's cheap and the Gnocchi al Forno was filling and absolutely delicious. Find it here.

Back at the hostel, we all had a final drink before Kaysey made her way to the airport and everyone prepared to disperse the next day. It was a nice ending note.

(166) is Monday, 21 June 2010.

I got my new camera. It's wonderful. The pictures are amazing. And I had about 6 hours to take pictures of everything I wanted to document in Prague.

This included the Magical Mystery Mall (where I wandered Sunday morning), the nearby rose garden, bridges, metronome and panorama of the city, town square, a store selling crazy stuff, and trams. I took the least efficient and most touristy route possible, but I had time and a 24-hour transit pass. I also had lunch at NOI, whose delicious Phad Thai has convinced me that I love Thai food. It's here, just up the street from Ristorante Carmelita.

I had another overnight train to catch.

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Fruit by the Footnotes

* I'm told that Prague is so architecturally diverse because it's the only city in Europe that wasn't demolished by the Nazis during WWII. And be warned: you're in for another photo album with lots of buildings (but more people this time).

** And I don't get why they don't go 24 hours... Prague is something of a party city, so why don't they keep it open when people will need it most? DC is kind of the same way...

*** You have no idea how satisfying it is to go from the Euro (which, granted, isn't as bad as it was in January) and the Pound - both of which dominate the dollar - to the Czech Kurona. It's so much fun to look at the price of something, divide it by 20, and THEN decide if it's reasonable.