Brian on the Road

First of all, Prague is a very fun city. There are 11,000 bars according to one of our books, and I believe it. I tried to sample a good representative sample, but to no avail. It"s overwhelming.

Second, the entire place is a post card. I stopped taking pictures at one point because the captions would have been "amazingly cool city block in Prague III", etc.

Third, there"s a lot to see in Prague, so it can be a little overwhelming in that respect.

Fourth, it"s a pretty touristy city, which is good because most everyone speaks either French or English and there"s lots of good food, but bad because touristy means lots of tourists. (And I realize that I"m part of the problem.)

We found a semi-decent pension (similar to a real hotel, but not as nice) near the old square, in walking distance to everything. So far the easiest thing to do when travelling is to find a place when you get there. This flies directly in the face of everything that my Hendrix blood stands for, but after doing it for a while it only gives me slight heart palpatations. We found a cool little Cuban place where we sat outside, I ordered a steak wrapped in bacon, and we drank mojitos and toasted Seth, master of the mojito.

The next day we started where everyone on Earth (and most of them were there when we were) starts - Prague castle. After going in where everyone else comes out, we finally figured it out and did a self-guided audio tour. Neither of us could stomach a tour group or guide. We saw the changing of the guard at noon and then the Cathedral as well as several of the other parts of the castle. After a while we were on total overload because there"s so much packed into the place. We got lunch at a Cantina (imported from somewhere) after discovering the Sushi place was closed for renovations (not kidding). We made another trip back to the castle to finish it off and headed back to town.

The next couple of days included walking all around the city to see some other sites, including a really cool set of buildings that make up the Jewish quarter. We had the obligatory lunches in cafes, and the requisite beers in pubs, bars, cafes, bagel shops, and everywhere else they could fit a cash register. It was strange to go from Morocco, where alcohol is by far the most expensive thing you can buy, to Prague, where a large beer costs less than a Coke (and it"s served colder). We took in some live music at a couple jazz clubs a couple of nights as well. On our last night we made the "seemed like a good idea at the time" decision to go to a giant club. Packing and our 5am taxi the next morning were probably the low point of the trip so far, but when you end up in Dubrovnik Croatia by 10am, life ain"t so bad...

(In case you"re wondering why I"m using the double quote instead of a single apostrophe, it"s because I"m in Croatia and the keyboard is crap.)