Europe Arts Tour: Days 4 to 6
I. Love. Prague.
I can’t even put into words how much I love it, because wow.
It’s stunning. Plus, the Czech Krona is weaker than the South African Rand (I
had no idea that was even possible, but anyway) so everything there is pretty
cheap, considering it’s a European country.
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| View of Prague from Petrin Gardens |
My adventures in Prague officially started on Saturday
morning, even though we arrived in the city on Friday evening after an
extremely long two-hour flight from Paris. Dinner was Mac Donald’s from the
shopping centre across the street from our hotel (it was the only thing open –
I’m not usually the type of person who travels halfway across the world just to
eat the same things we have at home, but a girl has got to eat, ya feel me?).
So anyway, on Saturday morning I wandered downstairs sleepily into the
breakfast area, and found myself in Bouwer family heaven.
A note: our family takes breakfast VERY seriously. We don’t
care if we don’t eat for the rest of the day, so long as there’s a decent
breakfast wherever we are. And our hotel in Prague wins the prize for best
breakfasts – hands down. There was everything you could ever possibly want in a
breakfast, ranging from cereals to chocolate croissants to bacon to fruit salad
to homemade granola. They had SIXTEEN different types of tea to choose from. If
we had stayed in Prague any longer, and not have had to endure the extreme
amount of walking that we did, you probably would’ve had to roll me home.
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| The Astronomical Clock |
Speaking of walking, there was a LOT of it. We took the tram
into the old part of Prague, where all the real tourist attractions are – as
opposed to Forever 21 and H&M in the shopping centre right by our hotel,
where I’m pretty sure about 90% of our tour group would have preferred to spend
the day. But despite the fact that my feet were about to fall off once we had
finished the touring part of the day, Prague was enchanting, with its little
cobblestone streets and century-old buildings all over the place. The
Astronomical Clock and Prague Castle were definitely highlights, and we spent
about an hour watching the clock just to, you know, double check that it did
really work after hundreds of years and that the tour guide hadn’t been lying
to us (you never know these days).
That night was spent running through the torrential rain to
the Prague Opera House. The evening’s performance of ‘Swan Lake’ was somewhat
dulled by the fact that we were all sitting shivering in our seats due to our
soaked – and probably ruined – dresses and expensive shoes. We got several
glares at our (apparently horrifying) disheveled appearances that we had spent
so long on in the sanctuary of our hotel (obviously before we had known that we
had to walk three or so kilometers in the rain to the Opera House). Oh well, it
was an experience, even though we didn’t get to act like princesses for the
night. (We must’ve resembled Cinderella BEFORE all the spell casting, rather
than after she was transformed by the fairy godmother…)
The next day was probably one of my favourites over the
course of the whole trip. We began with a meander through the beautiful Petrin
Gardens, chatting and laughing and probably disturbing the entire city – thirty
teenage girls make a LOT of noise when they aren’t gossiping. Once we’d made it
down the hill on which the gardens were situated, we went on a short boat
cruise and then visited yet another stunning Art Museum. Of course, what with
our feet still aching from the previous day, the last fifteen minutes of the
visit were spent sitting on the floor in the foyer, much to the dismay of the
receptionist, and hacking into the next-door hotel’s free Wi-Fi. (Over the
course of the trip, we became EXTREMELY good at hacking Wi-Fi codes.)
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| Morning stroll through Petrin Gardens |
After a late lunch, we started the five-hour bus trip to
Austria, where we had plenty of time to catch up on sleep, or just stare out
the windows at the beautiful countryside.
Next stop: Vienna, Austria.
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