8 June 2007

Another day off in Prague
Today we ate breakfast at the flat and then ventured onto the subway to go to the castle. Monika briefed us on which trains to take and we pulled it off quite flawlessly with a little help from the locals. As we climbed up to the castle from the metro station we noticed that the crowds of tourists were incredible. Yesterday when we were there we didn't notice that there we that many people around, but today the line to get into the church wrapped half way around the big building. There were tour groups everywhere. We walked through the castle gardens which were quite small and decided to get away from these crowds and join the crowds back on the other side of the river.
We were hungry and decided to have lunch in a restaurant. Now, everything in this touristy big city is expensive, but we seemed to find one of the fancier, pricier places in the area. The lunch special they served was tasty but fairly small. We still aren't used to some of the things that go on in restaurants. For example, before bringing our salads they brought a basket of 4 rolls, so we scarfed them down. Later we discovered that we were charge separately for the bread because we ate it. If we had left it sitting there, we would not have been charged. That's unusual for us Americans.
We walked across the pedestrian-only St. Charles bridge which was just packed with tourists and vendors selling all kinds of junk. It was like a scene from the stockyards.
We headed to the south end of the old town area and suddenly the crowds disappeared. There were some really nice churches in this area. We toured through an small monastery and happened upon an old church and graveyard surrounded by a large park area. John found some Frisbee freestylers there. He showed them his one move (which he hit, by the way) and then spent some time talking with them. They are going to the big freestyle championships coming up in a few weeks in Amsterdam that our friends Bethany, Rodney, Dave and Heather are going to.
We walked part of the way back, stopping at a bookstore that we were told might have the cycling route maps of the Czech Republic that our Aussie friends had (no luck) and at the grocery store for a bottle of wine for dinner tonight. From there we took the subway back and enjoyed a nice dinner and dessert that Monika made for us.