Japan to Australia via Eastern Europe - Part 9 - Day 7 - First day in Prague...

Ant and I had a terrible night sleep. I was feeling really anxious about if we would have somewhere to stay tonight (or the next three nights)... Maybe we could find a cosy looking cardboard box near the retro metro station?...

We both were fully awake by 5:30am... I said to Ant "perhaps I should blog" - but Ant wanted to check his email to see if that British Airlines mess from yesterday had been fixed...

As Ant walks down the building stairs - he was spotted via CCTV (gotta love CCTV... cough!) by the receptionist woman from last night. She raced up to Ant and said that they had room in another apartment building for the rest of our booking - but we would need to move by tomorrow night. She was saying that the room they are giving us is a lot nicer than the one we had "booked". In a goodnews double - Ant found out that they had rebooked our flights from Dubrovnik to London - which was another great load of our collective minds. It looks like after the right royal f##k up that was Day 6 of our holiday - that things are going Milhouse again.

We both lounge around in the apartment until 9:30ish until we ventured out to a nearby supermarket called "Albert" for some breakfast supplies. Albert is a little bit like Aldi - in the way that the checkout chicks rush all of your products through the cash register at breakneck speeds - and that you pack your own shopping (sexy bags are extra). They also have a big range of cheap grog (just like european Aldi's - not the Australian version unfortunately). We bought some bread, milk, museli, jam and juice for about $10AUD - not too shabby...

After a leisurely breakfast in the apartment - we decide to browse the net to work out where we would go next. Our original itinerary had us travelling from Prague to Vienna, Austria - but we decided to give that a miss and go north to Krakow, Poland instead because Krakow would be more interesting and cheaper than going to Austria - although we would have a bit more travelling time to get between Prague, Krakow and Budapest than going to Vienna instead.

On our way out of the apartment building (for those wanting to know - they were the Prague City Apartments - you'll be finding a trip advisor review in the near future)... we were told that we needed to move now to the new apartment (instead of tomorrow like we were told by the other receptionist). This was a little problematic - as we had bought heaps of groceries plus we had washing that needed to dry. After just packing everything into our bags (including wet laundry and shopping) - we left our bags at the old apartment (for the minute) and tried to find the Apartment Mensa (I know it is the wrong spelling - but hey - it is close enough). After finding the aforementioned apartment complex - we were given the key to our new apartment - only to be told that the new apartment was in a different building...

After messing around for half an hour - we finally managed to track down this new apartment - and it was indeed better than the original apartment - big flat screen TV, gucci toilet and shower, nice big bed - it looked like things were going Milhouse! Plus this was in a much more central location than the original apartment...

After grabbing our bags and checking out of the first place - we dumped our bags and finally got around to doing something touristy (other than getting screwed by wotif and the apartment complex) and wander around the Old Town of Prague.

LP describes Prague as a "golden city" and it probably is... Once you get out of the grungy circa 1970s subway station and communistic shopping mall district - Prague is a beautiful cobble-stoned city with big castles, cathedrals and grand old buildings. It is pretty amazing that most of the city is still intact following the second world war (or as Kath n Kim call it - "double-ya, double-ya two").

The Old Square of Prague was lined with what looked like the Cinderalla Castle from Disneyworld (although I later got a sermon from Ant - saying that maybe the Disneyland castle was modelled on some of these castles in europe...) and a tonne of touristic stalls of "kransky rolls" and "Czech pretzel thingys" goodness..

We took a few happy snaps and made tracks to the Castle (aka Prague Castle) - a huge "fortress"-like complex that sits upon a hill overlooking central Prague. Everything was very kodak moment-y walking up to the castle - with all the cobble stone paths and quaint trams - you could have sworn you were at Fantasy Land at Disneyworld!

Although we did notice that the further up the hill you got to the Castle - the steeper the prices were for food. Ant gives a bit shout out to those restaurants who have "Tourist Special Menus"... Why I seem to recall that Ant promises to burn down any restaurant that has one of these "Tourist Special Menus" - be warned... We also walked past "Cowboys Steak House" - which according to one of the brouchures at the hotel - is the "sexiest steak house in Prague" with half naked men adorning the brouchure cover. Although I could have sworn that there were half naked pictures of woman when I walked past the establishment... I think they need to make up there minds if they are going for the "Manpower" market or the "Hooters" market - perhaps they are going for the "Bisexual" market or the "fun for the whole family" market...?

Upon arrival at the Castle - a massive air raid siren went off - for about 2 minutes or so. I probably should try and claim "loss of hearing" with my travel insurance because my ear drums have never been the same...

We had managed to time our arrival to Prague Castle with the 12 noon changing of the guard. They have all these hot looking czech soliders who do a bit of a prace around the forecourt during a music spectaluar from the army band or something. Who needs Cowboys Steakhouse when this was for free...??!

After the show was over - we bought the "Long Tour Pass" for 350 Paseos (or Krowns as I think they are called). The exchange rate is really confusing for AUD - it is something like 17 krowns per Australian dollar... and I don't really know my 17-times tables! They seem to have this "Eastern European" thing going on at tourist attractions - when you fork out heaps of money for an enterance ticket - then you have to pay extra to earn the "special privilage" to be able to take photos in a tourist site... Although many people seem to ignore this rule and just take random photos anyway. Our Long Tour Pass covered all of the attractions here at the Castle - and is valid for two days (if you need that long to see everything)...

Our first stop was this big arse gothic cathedreal (in sort of Notre Dame french gothic style). I think if the Christians are going to win people back to going to church - they need to deck their churches out with freaky sh## like gargoyles and snakes and stuff... Yeah - rock and roll! Anyway - it was very sexy - and there were even some famous stained-glass windows by the Czech artist Mucha (who I will talk about on another blog entry)...

We then checked out the Castle Museum - which went into gory details about the castle site (including pre-history), medievil politics, and even how they heated and catered the place back in the day... I'm sure the castle has an EER of minus 20 or something.

After the museum - we checked out inside one of the castle buildings - where they used to play indoor jousting (as one does). It had fantastic views of the city - where myself and Ant risked inprisionment by taking photos without a Prague Castle Photo Licence.... "Breakin the law... Breakin the law... yeah". There was even this scary Czech guard woman that looked like she had just stepped out of a 1982 East Germany salon... with sexy leather print capri pants and a half-bleached bum part perm - she had the look - the 1982 East Germany Communism look... Grrrrrr indeed!

We checked out a small cathedreal which had a very rock-n-roll statue of Jesus out the front with human remains no less underneath the statue... Very Alice Cooper indeed!

We made the mistake of going to some "Tourist Street" which reminded us of "Main Street USA" at Disneyland - only a Czech version... (is there some sort of recurring theme here - maybe Prague was designed by Walt himself???) There was a medievil S&M museum (aka Torture museum) at the end of Main Street USA which showed how sick the Czech's could be back in the day... In fact - it was up there with the torture devices in Saw II.

It was getting late in the day - and we were getting sort of thirsty... However - we did not want to pay for the free world's most expensive can of coke (at about $5AUD a pop)... so we kept on trekking.

We checked out the National Gallery - which was hella sh## - not just in terms of the crappy monotonus Jesus art - but also because of the hidious communist architecture within the Gallery itself. What better way to ruin a beautiful historic castle by making it look like the Australian National University with sh## 12th century art. To make matters worse - there was this annoying american family following me around the gallery shouting out that all the Jesus pictures was "beautiful" and "lovely"... Ugghh!

However - we checked out the smaller (but better) Prague Castle Gallery - with european baroque-style art. Plus it had done a better job than the national gallery in renovating the space for a gallery.

It was mid-afternoon - and we had finished all of the sites of the Prague Castle - so we headed back in the direction of town. We passed over the "Mission Impossible" bridge or the "Charles Bridge" which Ant ensured me that there were scenes of the original Mission Impossible movie that were filmed there. That movie was almost in the running as the "best movie of all time" when Emilio Estevez gets killed off in the first five minutes of the film - but then it just gets confusing and stewpid - climaxing with the stewpidfying scene of Tom Cruise flying a helicopter thru the Chunnel... Whatever!! Anyhow - on the Charles Bridge itself - there seemed to be a horde of artists who had graduated from the "Bad School of Touristy Charactertures" with pictures that sort of resembles Angelina Jolie... or was that Jennifer Aniston??? I couldn't tell...

We stumble across the main shopping strip of Prague - and JOY!... we discovered H&M! Although we had to save H&M for later has we were both dying of starvation and thirst.

We headed for the "bad shopping mall" in the middle of the city - a circa 1970's communist architecture abomination - complete with shops that still sell 1970's Eastern Germany chic. We grabbed some "Gyros" or "euro-Kebabs" that put those miserable Ali Baba Kebabs in Australia to shammmme!... and they were only $4AUD plus coke to boot.

We decided to see how freaky the bad shopping mall was - and it was indeed really scary. I think Dimmy's in Goulburn is more stylish than the "bad shopping mall". There was even a "Hip Hop" clothes section which was very street - 1972 East-German street. The sporting goods section was a little strange too - x-country skis were plentiful and also were semi-automatic rifles and machine guns...

After chilling for a bit at our gucci apartment - we headed to a local train ticket booking office - where we booked our one way tickets to Krakow for about $40AUD each (not too bad for a 6 hour train trip). We also pick up some supplies (= red wine, diet coke, euro fanta (which is sooo good) and some chippies and fruit... as you do) from Albert (the sexiest name for a supermarket).

I chill out at the apartment while Ant wanders around the streets of Prague. I catch up with the 150 or so Euro channels on our cable - including news channels for every tin pot country imaginable... Hell there was even Cubavision... There was both version of Al Jazeera (Engrish and Arabic) and a little ditty called "Eurotica" - a smutty "erotic" (and I use that term very loosely) channel from Germany featuring lots of scantily clad girls doing weird stuff. This time - they were showing their feet to the camera whilst playing Chemical Brothers songs (inappropriate music to strip by #1 - any Chemical Brothers songs). Obviously - they were targeting the German foot fetish market today.

After Ant got back - we realised that our gucci apartment was missing a bottle opener - so Ant graciously got one from a local supermarket. Our last, "less gucci" apartment had a bottle opener - so we were just assuming that the gucci apartment would have one too... but alas no...

We both get tucked into the bottle of wine and the copious amounts of chips and junk food we had bought. I watch a bit of "Police Academy V - The Miami Assignment" in german and we both fall asleep - without even going out for din-din's... as you do. Personally - I think Police Academy reached a peak at Polic Academy IV - Citizens on Patrol - and it was all downhill from there...