Sunday 18 August – Berlin to Prague
Auf Wiedersehen Berlin, we are off to Prague!
Our train was departing at 8:59 on the dot and we needed to get a taxi to the train station as it was more than walking distance. After breakfast the previous day which was completely packed, apart from us there were two other tables used. It was an hour earlier than the previous day though.
We ended up getting to the station around 8:15am. Ros went to find a coffee while I waited with the bags. It was then that I saw one of many pigeons. But this pigeon was special. Rather than flying down to the platform, it walked down the stairs. Yep, walked. Special indeed.
Finally our train turned up and we boarded amongst the throng of other people. We weren’t able to reserve a seat on this train so we found empty seats against the window. That was after we worked out how they were reserved – slips of paper on the wall saying to and from stations. The two we had were ‘Berlin to Prague’. 10 minutes in and nobody had shown up yet. Bonus! We thought. A few minutes later we were approached by a couple who had reserved the seats. They had gotten on further up the train and only just worked out where their seats were. Oh well, we jumped to the four seat one next to us of which only two were reserved for later on.
The rest of the train ride was fairly good. It was only 4 hours or so in total. We arrived into Prague – with our hotel being about 900 metres walking distance from the station. We exchanged some money and headed on our way. It may not have been the best idea as the streets around there were very small cobble stones. The walk however was fairly straight forward to the hotel, but it was hot. We got into the hotel and checked in – again very easy – and headed up to our room to cool down and work out where we were going to go to.
We needed to find some sunscreen and other stuff, so thought we would head out and have a look around. We found the big shopping centre and went in to the food court. We had nothing but the best local food here – McDonalds. Yes, we shouldn’t have, but when you are hangry, you are hangry (or at least Ros was and needed food fast!).
Following lunch we walked to the square nearby. People had told us about this clock we had to go and see, on the hour. We missed the on the hour bit originally, but we did find the tourist information centre and get some brochures. It was stinking hot so on the way back to the hotel we got something to eat that we were told to try – Trdlink (or spelling like that) – cinnamon cones with ice cream. Ros had chocolate inside and vanilla ice cream while I had strawberries inside and vanilla ice cream. Given the heat, they were quickly melting. We had seen a lot of people with the ice cream running all over their hands. That wouldn’t be us – they were just eating it too slowly! We proceeded to eat it while hoping it wouldn’t melt too quick. It was good, but we had cinnamon sugar all over our hands. A bit of water fixed it up though 🙂
We arrived back to our room and just cooled down. Very refreshing to have the air conditioning cranked. Ros’s feet were a bit red from the heat, so we decided to have a rest for a bit and put our feet up, literally. We did still want to see the clock though, so would venture out later for dinner.
We ended up heading out about 8:30pm towards the clock, along with every other man and his dog. I got an ok view of the clock and waited for 9pm to come around. Just prior lots of people turned up. We watched the clock do its thing and then we headed back towards the hotel to find some food. We weren’t that hungry so something light would be enough. We did find a pub along the way, but out back and out front was packed and inside was way too hot. Miss, for now. We came across a place selling small pancakes. We had a plate of 7 to share. Just enough for both of us.
Back at the hotel we had a look at all the stuff on offer in Prague and worked out what we wanted to see. The biggest thing we wanted to see was the Castle.
