Prague

I have to admit, the title of this post is about as lame as Two & a Half Men (have I mentioned my hatred for that show?), but it was a half-arsed attempt at combining two (2) key themes from our weekend in Prague:
1. It was farking cold (shiver me timbers)!!! I remember looking at the weather forecast on Friday afternoon before leaving the office - I turned white as a ghost and couldn't believe it, let alone having to tell Loz (given how much of a cold frog she is, and how her perfect holiday is lying on a beach in 30'C+ heat)! The forecast showed a top of -9'C and a low of -15'C! Seriously what the hell was this place (obviously Hell would be a lot warmer but then again, so would a cold shower). So we repacked on Friday night, including layer after layer.
2. Snitzel - we've learnt from visiting Germany and Austria that this part of Europe tend to love their snitzel and potato, booya. By the end of our weekend, four (4) of my five (5) last meals were snitzel and mash, what a life!
So there you have it, the lamest blog post title, and a loose explanation behind the (loose) logic.

Dressed in double-skin bottoms, jeans, skin-top, shirt, jumper, ski-jacket, gloves and beanie, we got a taxi at sparrow's fart (4am) to Gatwick on Saturday morning. Our driver immediately recognised us (as we did him) as the lot he took to Stansted in July last year with Loz's parents. Nice fella, bit of a hippie, good for a chat. Mind you, it was farking early and all we wanted to do was catch a brief nap while we could. After a while of chatting he then realised we had common taste in music so he blasted several numbers from Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains the Same; albeit a great live album, but for f#%k's sake mate, it was 4 in the morning!

Once we grounded in Prague we pulled a 2,000 Kroena note out of the cash machine (if you want to feel rich, go to Prague), and bussed it into town to check out some sites.
We were layered up to the wazoo but Loz was still freezing into submission and finding somewhere to sit inside for a coffee was proving surprisingly difficult. There were a number of cafes based in the Old Town square (is there like a piazza somewhere around here where we can just hang out?) but they were all outdoors and not providing comfort from what seemed Arctic temperatures. We grabbed a hot chocolate for the road which started to freeze over whilst drinking it, wow.

Now I may have mentioned just once or twice on this blog that we are shit travellers! We didn't know the first thing about Prague before this trip, we'd just heard it as a nice place to go, good enough for us... When I asked around at work the day before for tips on what to do in Prague, the general response I got was 'drink beer', heaven?! Wanting to do a little more than just drink piss at 9am we went in search for some museums of interest. We are some of the least museumy people around but some are often worth a look, especially in parts of Europe with such interesting history. A couple that took our attention were the Torture Museum, and the Communism Museum, neither of which we could find; I don't know what was wrong with the map we had, but these particular museums were like ghosts, not to be found by us anyway. Next...

After hours of just wandering around and taking in the beautiful city (much to Loz's disgust given how incredibly cold she was) we pulled into a pub just off Prague City Centre on the North side of the river. Loz smashed some Beef Goulash (a traditional Czech dish) with dumplings whilst I consumed snitzel número uno (1), tick. A few delicious Staropramen beers and we were ready for a Nanna-nap, so we wandered to the hotel and checked in for some shut-eye (probably wouldnt have needed a sleep if the hippie cabbie hadn't kept us awake).

Dark and even colder (we didn't think it could get any colder) and we strolled up the road to an original Pilsner Urquell pub for dinner, snitzel number two (2). I remember having a sip of Pilsner Urquell when dad went through a beer tasting phase about ten (10) years ago, and I remember him raving about it as one of his favorites. I don't recall ever trying it since, but it is freaking delicious! Also very very hard to beat at equivalent to about $1.75AUD for half a litre, bingo!!! Between the two (2) of us, a two-course dinner with several beers, wines, and dessert cost about $30AUD, love this place!

There were a few dead giveaways as to just how cold it was in Prague while we were there:
1. Drinks that had been left or spilled on the pavement had frozen. You couldn't walk half a block without seeing a can of coke (or something similar) spilled on the ground, with a frozen puddle escaping the can across the footpath. If you were really poor and in Prague, you could probably get by on licking pavement beverages, maybe it'll become a thing?
2. Chicken.

On Sunday morning we ate in for our included breakfast at the hotel, scoffing copious amounts of food for what was inevitably one (1) of the longest days of our lives. We made a bit of a plan on specific things to see, otherwise we figured we'd end up at the airport hours early drinking more piss and twiddling our thumbs.
So we trained it up to the Jewish Quarter, just above Old Town. We wandered for a while and eventually bit the bullet and got a Jewish Meseum Pass which granted us three (3) wishes, a box of Tim-Tams, and access to five (5) Sinagogues and the Jewish Cemetary, good deal really. Our knowledge of Judaism was (and still is) very limited and neither of us had visited a Sinagogue before. Like most of these sorts of things, once I see these sorts of places, I become so hungry for information; the Jewish history is simply fascinating to me now, look out Wikipedia! We spent half a day wandering through the Sinagogues, each unique and telling a different part of Jewish history. The Jews obviously had a tough run in the Holocaust in this part of the world, so there's just so much stuff to learn and know, super interesting I have to say. The cemetery that sits between three (3) of the Sinagogues houses over 1,200 bodies (I think that's the number), but takes up very little area. Bodies are buried up to 12-deep (again, I think that's the number I read), a tiny 55cms apart (on top of each other). Really fascinating stuff, if you're ever bored, Google Jewish Prague and you're set for a couple of hours I reckon.

Now museumed out, we settled in for some grub, snitzel number three (3), and it started to snow outside, finally! Now there was a decent excuse for it to be cold, the cold is always more bearable when it's snowing.
After a couple of delicious lagers and some horrible mulled wine, we got back on our feet and went to check out Prague Castle on the North side of the river. We winged it quite a bit and followed our nose, which turned out to be a top choice as we wandered through some beautiful back streets, all but empty except a few cops here and there. Prague Castle sits inside what I assume are city walls, with all entrances guarded by still-standing guards with massive guns with swords that'd shred anything in their way on the end. You'd see people getting as close as they felt comfortable with the guards, posing for photos (almost Mr Bean-esk, minus the bravery), as it appears the guards were on instruction not to be distracted from their duty. I think about how boring that job would be, not moving for hours on end; then I think about how restless someone like Loz would be in at environment, she wouldn't last five (5) minutes! So we wandered inside the walls for a while and came to the best view of the city at the top of the hill. Loz worked her camera magic and as day started to lean towards night we strolled back down to the water and settled in for some beers at an Italian restaurant on a boat on the edge of the water, nice.
Once darkness fell, all historic structures (bridges, castles etc) lit up beautifully, this was Prague at its' prettiest; if only we'd known the night before (shit travelers).

Sadly our time started to run short so we bussed it out to the airport for snitzel number four (4), again delicious. The boards were already showing that our flight was delayed (they didn't specify by how much) so we settled into some fairly comfy seats and played the waiting game (everyone's favourite airport game). Word came out from some Poms near us that the plane wasnt planned to leave London until several hours after we were meant to be on it back to London; it started to look like a fairly long night (little did we know).
Bums sore, we cashed in our 'apology' vouchers for copious amounts of chocolate and settled down to rest our head until we heard more... Our plane was originally scheduled to leave at 9:45pm...

I recall getting woken up by an airport employee in a panic at one (1) stage, him thinking we were about to miss our flight to Stansted. If only we were flying to Stansted, their plane left about midnight. Back to sleep, I awoke a couple of hours later to find we'd been called to board, hooray!
We have joked numerous times before going on our weekend city breaks that we'd love for our return fights to be delayed by several days due to snow; our dream had come partially true this time, but not in a good way at all!
Surrounded by whinging Poms we boarded our plane and left Prague at about 2am Monday morning. We landed at 4:30am, jumped on the bus home at 5am, got home at 7am, had a shower and went straight to work... Made it to about midday and called stumps, time for bed!