Prague (Days 10, 11, 12)

Our flight to Prague was about two hours long and I was again able to sleep almost the whole way. The airport was a bit outside of the city, so we had to take some public transportation into the main city. We took the metro and to get up out of underground we got to ride a really fast and long escalator. About as long as the escalator in the Angel London Tube station, but the escalator moved much faster. We made our way to the Hostel, and we truly thought we were in the wrong place. The hostel was SO nice. It was like a hotel. The reception lobby was mixed with a restaurant and bar and there was a live band playing. We went downstairs to our room, where our beds had a pull away curtain so you had privacy from the rest of the room. The bathrooms were nicer than the bathrooms at the hotel in Barcelona. They had a huge shower head and a detachable one. Everything was just so nice, we couldn’t believe it.

We asked the ho(s)tel’s recommendation for a place for real Czech food and where we could find an ATM. It was hard to do the currency exchange rate here, because it was about 1 US$ was about 18 Czech Crowns. I went to the ATM and received one 2000 czech crown note. Very weird feeling.

We went to a Pilsner pub for dinner where I got Beef Goulash and a Pilsner. We discussed our plans of seeing the city for the next day.

We met Hayden, Stephen, Joe, Matt, Phil, and Randy back at the hostel and we were in time for the special on shots! a shot of rum, vodka, absinthe, or some christmas-tasting one was only 30 crowns. how could you go wrong?? afterwards we went to the 5-story club in Prague each floor had different types of music on, including a floor entitled "black music" which was top 40 grinding tunes, hahaha and one of the other floors was called "dancing music" and it was all 80s and 90s classics, including ice ice baby. It was a BLAST.

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The beds in the ho(s)tel had down pillows and comforters, I was truly so happy. But we did have to get out of bed to see the city. We first went to the castle by walking over Charles Bridge. The bridge had tons of statues all over it depicting different medieval people. There were lots of artists on the bridge selling beautiful pictures, paintings, and jewellery. We walked up lots of steps to get to the castle, but the views (again) were WELL worth it. I couldn’t believe how beautiful Prague was. There was even a hot air balloon in the landscape which was pretty cool. We made it up to the castle just in time to see the changing of the guard. It was much different than any other changing of the guard I have seen. There was a marching-band feel to it, with trumpet players up above all the action of the guards changing. The cathedral that was part of the castle was really beautiful.

On our way back down the hill we passed by a museum that we decided to go into. The museum was within the Lobkowicz Palace. We got an audio guide with the purchase of our ticket, and it was the best audio guide I have ever heard at a museum. It was more like a story about how the Lobkowicz Palace has gone between many different transitions. It also had a whole section on music, which is where they had original scores of Beethoven’s work. It was incredible.

We went out to eat for lunch, and got more of the Czech famous potato dumplings. They were really tasty. We then went to the Old Town Square, where we found out they were having International Chef’s Day. We couldn’t believe we had already ate! We still walked around and got dessert.We met a guy from the US who was traveling alone, and then we found a spider bike outside of one of the bar crawl bars. If you've never seen a spider bike, google it. Its so cool. It has seats and petals for 8 different bike riders all in a circle, with one steering wheel. In the middle of the circle there's a tray with cup holders. Coolest. Thing. Ever.

We decided to just eat dinner at the hostel, it was really cheap plus I got to eat buffalo wings. We went to a bar afterwards, but it wasn't fun so we decided to leave and go back to the 5-story club. On the ice-ice-baby floor...we danced the night away. I think we were a bit of a spectacle, but we were having so much fun.

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We woke up to walk around the old Jewish Ghetto before heading over to the airport. We just wandered the streets for a few hours which was a great ending to break. We were all really ready to head back to London. Traveling was a lot of fun, but really tiring and expensive. It was exciting to know that we would be in the same place for a while (2 weeks until we go to Amsterdam anyway). 

We took a British Airways flight home, which was nice. We even got juice and snacks on the plane! You forget what its like to be on a nicer airline. We landed at Heathrow in London, so it was really easy to get back to the flats. We just hoped on the Picadilly line of the Tube, and were able to head only 2 blocks from our flat.

Home sweet home.

Kelly and I wanted to upload pictures right away -- so we went over to where our classrooms are and watched Sleepless in Seattle while uploading pictures to facebook and our computers.

Rome (Days 7, 8, 9, 10)

My backpack was obviously too big for the EasyJet compartment, so I had to do some rearranging and layering but I got it all to fit and didn’t have to pay a ton of money for a checked bag. The flight was only an hour, so I slept the whole way.

When we got to Rome, we headed for the hostel to drop our stuff off and then went right to the Vatican so we could get there before it closed. We made it and Kelly knew a trick to get free tickets to see the Pope speak, so she went and got those and then we headed to St. Peter’s Basilica, Cupola, and Cathedral. The cupola was our first mission. We paid the extra 2 euros to take the elevator, but then had over 300 stairs to go afterwards. The stairs were spiral as well, which was tricky. They were really narrow, and 300 stairs is a lot. (Especially after eating like we were in Italy). When we made it to the top, it was well worth it. You could see all of Vatican City and beyond. It was beautiful; the sun was just starting to come down so the shadows of everything made the pictures and views awesome. We climbed back down and we were able to see the cathedral from above. We got to go inside the cathedral afterwards.

We’ve been to a lot of cathedrals, but this one was definitely the most stunning. It was gigantic and the statues everywhere were really beautiful. I really liked all the angel statues. 

We ate dinner near the Vatican on the early side. We were the only people in the restaurant at the beginning of our meal. Vendors trying to sell roses kept coming inside the restaurant to offer us them. It was pretty annoying and weird because it was a group of 5 girls; I was not going to buy a rose for myself. The rose vendors were really aggressive too.

Since we were so tired all day, those cupola stairs did us in; we decided to head to bed early. We had to wake up on the early side to see the pope also. 

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We went back to the Vatican via the metro (not as clean as London’s tube system, but easy to figure out) to see the pope talk. It was so much more crowded than the night before. We got seats in the middle and waited for the pope to come out on the pope-car. When he made his entrance, everyone stood on their chairs to see him. I saw him a few times through everyone’s heads and cameras. He spoke in Italian, so I didn’t understand his speech, but then he blessed everyone in tons of different languages. I couldn’t believe he knew that many! The ceremony went really long, and I was antsy to get to see everything else in Rome, but we waited until the pope was done to leave and buy our tickets for the double decker bus tour...Being a tourist is fun.

We took the bus around to the Trevi Fountain, which I loved. We got gelato (surprise!) near the fountain and sat and enjoyed the sun and view of the amazing fountain. Everyone around was making wishes by throwing coins into the fountain, so all of us joined in.

We were able to see a lot of other sights from the bus, and we walked around to see the Pantheon. I really enjoyed going inside this holy place. It was interesting to see how the Romans took over a Pagan holy place and made it their own. Alex and I got into a discussion about how the Romans even though they took over this holy place, it proves that they did respect the area. If the Roman conquerors didn’t respect the holy place of the Pagans, they would have destroyed the building and used the material elsewhere. The fact that they made it their new holy place was interesting to me. We also went to the Spanish Steps which had a lot of the annoying vendors selling roses and scarves. It was a beautiful view of the city because it was pretty high up.

For dinner we ate at the free pasta party at the hostel! It was pretty good and great that it was free. We went to Campo di Fiori later that night and met with Randy, Matt, Joe, Phil, Evan, and Mark at "The Drunken Ship." Evan bought a dozen roses for a euro from a vendor and we all got one.

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We had the bus tour tickets for another day, so we took it to the Coliseum and the Forum. We skipped the line by buying audio guides which was helpful so we knew what we were looking at. I truly just can’t believe that the Coliseum is still standing; it’s amazing to me. Underneath the floor, inside the middle, the floor (partially) was taken up to show the structure underneath. There are lots of narrow passageways and compartments. They were for the slaves to help prepare the warriors for fighting and also stored the animals that would be used in events held at the Coliseum.

After the Coliseum we walked over to the area of the Forum. The area was huge, so we were all glad we had a lot of time.

We saw a lot of the ruins and walked through the park-like area. We walked up the steps to Palentine Hill. This was one of the best views we have seen so far. You were able to see the entire park we had walked through as well as the Coliseum. Barb became our navigator to get through and so we were able to see everything. We walked through the rest of the park and headed back to the bus stop where we stopped to get popcorn. (More food? Us?)

We met up with Dahlia,a Bucknell girl studying in Rome. We went back to Campo di Fiori to meet her and her friends.We went to "The Drunken Ship" again. It was so much more crowded than last night. Tons of people were outside, which made it fun.

Rome doesn't have an open container law -- so we were able to bring our own beer to drink outside. 

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We woke up to go to the Vatican Museum early since our flight to Prague was this afternoon. Embarrassingly, we didn’t know that the Sistine Chapel was in Rome. We actually thought it was in Venice so we would have totally missed it had Wikipedia not existed. We got to the Museum and were a bit thrown back from the HUGE line. Tons of people tried to sell us tickets to skip the line for ‘only 7 euros more than the ticket price.’ Kelly really wanted to go inside, so she took the deal, but Barb, Maggie, Alex, and I waited in line. We made it into the museum and the student tickets ended up being A LOT cheaper than the people said outside.

The trip towards the Sistine Chapel was incredible. The narrow hallways and huge ceilings were jaw dropping. Then getting to the Sistine Chapel was amazing as well. It’s truly hard to put it in words how I felt. I didn’t ever think I would get emotional about art in any way, but this was different. I couldn’t believe I was actually there. The Sistine Chapel is something that I’ve learned about forever and everyone knows about (even if they don’t know exactly where in Italy it is). Looking up at the scenes of the artwork, I got the chills. It was incredible and so amazing that it has stayed so preserved all these years. I’m so glad we didn’t miss it.