Prague

Gutentag!
Since I have yet to fill you in on my weekend in Prague, I will do that now!  I will start by saying I will hopefully be making a trip back to Prague sometime during the summer because this trip was a little bit of a fail.

It started off by going to Cheb, another town in the Czech Republic.  We were told that there was super cheap, awesome shopping there where you could get good knock offs and everything.  Apparently my group went to the wrong spot because the spot we went to was not the best.  It was a flea market where you tell them a price and you bargain with them.  If any of you know me that well you know that I don't like  shopping or talking to strangers much.  All I walked away with was a soccer jersey for Tito that probably won't fit him and a dress for me.  It was not worth the stop.  After we were done shopping a trend of the weekend started we got lost trying to get back to the train station.  We eventually found it and lucky for us we had given ourselves enough time to find it before our train left.

Next we were off to Prague.  Prague is very beautiful, and I am really sad we didn't go straight there rather than stopping in Cheb.  We got to Prague and decided to take the tram to our hostel instead of a Taxi (trying to save some money).  A guy at the tram stop tried to help, and he told us to take the tram about five or six stops, and then ask people at the next stop for help.  The next people happened to be some missionary boys from Utah.  They were super nice, and they tried to help us the best they could.  I felt bad taking up so much of their time (I wish I could have taken them with us).  They introduced us to the Metro system, which would have been nice to use from the start because it is much easier than the tram.  When we arrived at our metro stop the fun began.  We decided to just take a taxi because we were tired of being lost, but when we got into our taxi the guy was like oh it is just a five minute away take a right, a left, and a left.  Well those fabulous directions got us more lost.  Then the next directions were, oh that is a fifteen walk that way just take a right, left, left, and left.  As helpful as those directions sound, they weren't.  After about seven more people and some use of a bad map we finally found our hostel.  We were starving and exhausted.  It was about 10:30 at night by this point so everything was closing.  We found a pizza shop thankfully and got a pizza.  After that we just went back to our hostel and slept.

The next morning armed with a better map and directions we were off to see the Prague Castle.  If any of you have seen the movie Inception that is how I constantly feel walking around in Europe.  It is like the streets and everything are constantly changing.  Luckily with a few wrong turns and a little back tracking we found the Prague castle without much trouble.  We had to climb up a lot of stairs to get to it, but it was worth it.  There was an amazing view of the city.  We decided to go on the short tour of the castle, and I really enjoyed it.  My favorite part was the church in the castle.  It was the prettiest church I have ever seen in my life.  The Prague castle was sadly the only thing we had time to see in Prague, and that is why I want to go back.

I hope this long blog post makes up for my terrible blogging.  I will hopefully have a post about Berlin soon!

Salzburg!

Ok, so it is official besides Kinsey I am the worst blogger ever.  I can’t really be blamed too much though because my Internet has been super bad!

I’ll fill you in on my first weekend trip, which was Salzburg.  It started off a little rough because the girl I traveled with and I didn’t do a lot of planning before we went.  We thought we made our hostel reservation, but it turned out when we arrived at midnight that we hadn’t and the hostel was closed.  It was also raining and very cold.  I was slightly scared since the Taxi had already driven away, but we walked down the street and found an empty pub and asked the lady that worked there if she could call us a taxi.  Luckily she was very nice and spoke English.  We got the taxi there, but sadly he did not speak English.  My friend ran back in the bar and had a lady come back out and translate that we needed any hotel open at this hour.  We found one, and the guy that worked there had to come down in his pajamas and let us in, but he was very nice.  The hostel was also very nice, so everything worked out all right. 

Our next day wasn’t a whole lot better because it was super rainy and cold.  We went on the Sound of Music tour in the morning, which I was very excited for but it was kind of a bummer since the weather was bad.  It was still fun to see all the places where the movie was filmed, and I know I will be very annoying the next time I see the movie shouting out how I was at all the different places.  Of course when the tour was over the sun decided to come out.  We went to the Old Town part of Salzburg because that is where most the historical and tourist stuff is.  Salzburg is gorgeous, so I did not mind walking around at all.  We didn’t do a whole lot the rest of the day besides walk around, and it was pretty funny to wonder forever and then find where you actually need to go.  I felt like that was how the whole trip went.  We would be lost for a little bit then suddenly we would be where we needed to be without really knowing how we got there. 

The next day our first mission was the find the Abbey that is in the Sound of Music movie because the tour shows you where it is, but it doesn’t take you to it.  We wondered for a while in the morning knowing kind of where it should be, but we couldn’t see it.  We walked up some stairs and were looking around deciding if we should give up or not, and that is when we looked up and realized we were in the Abbey walls.  The Abbey wasn’t that exciting but the accomplishment of finding it was well worth it. We also got a pass that let us into a bunch of different places in the town.  We went to the Salzburg museum, which was pretty interesting.  Then we went up to the fortress.  I liked the fortress a lot, and it gave an amazing view of the city.  Then I had my first wiener snitzel ever, which was delicious. 

Overall I really enjoyed Salzburg and would recommend it mainly because it is just so beautiful.  It could definitely be done in a day though if you planned ahead.  There isn’t a whole lot to see, but it was still fun.