Part 3: Prague

We arrived in Prague around mid-day and took a walk to our hostel which was located in the middle of the city. The city of Prague is beautiful and is one place that I wouldn't miss if I was touring around Europe.  Our hostel was nice and we ended up with 6 of us in an 8 person room (we met up with a friend).  After settling in we took a walk around the city and went to the bell tower which is the central focal point of the city and met up with some of the girls in our program who had arrived there around the same time as us.  We all headed over to the Lennon Wall and had fun taking pictures and reading the graffiti that was littered all over the wall.  We even added our own little bit about gypsies and how much we hate them.

That night we headed out to a few different bars with everyone and ended up having a pretty good time.  We woke up early the next morning and headed out to get a free walking tour around the city.  It turned out that we missed the tour by about 5 minutes so instead we ended up at the castle.  The castle in Prague sits at the high point in the city and from there you can overlook the entire city.  We walked around the castle grounds and saw the changing of the guard.  We never figured out what happens in the castle now (because we didn't want to pay to go in) but it was a nice walk around and gave us a good panorama of the city.  Shortly after the castle we met up with our friends and went on the later walking tour.  I wish I could say that I learned a lot and was very interested on the walking tour.  However, I spent the majority of the time hanging out in the back, talking to friends, and looking around.  One interesting part of the tour was the walk through the Jewish Sector where we learned that Hitler had planned on leaving all the buildings of this sector standing as a "monument" to the murdered Jewish people.  He wanted people to walk through the sector and see what he had accomplished.  Thankfully most of the day involved walking through one of the most beautiful cities that I have ever seen.

The next day we got up early and headed to the airport to catch our flight to Rome!! Unfortunately, halfway to the airport we found out that it was closing (volcanic ash!) an hour before our flight so we would not be able to fly that day.  After arriving at the airport we immediately turned around and headed to the train station.  After sitting in lines for 4-5 hours we finally found a train to Munich, Germany that night with  hopes that we could get to Rome from there.  The train station was the craziest travel experiences ever.  There were television crews on hand covering the madness and trains were booking out so fast that nobody could go where they wanted to.  We ended up in Munich (look at a map and see how out of the way that is!) for the night and after waking up at 6 AM the following morning ended up getting a train to Rome at 9:15 AM.

Rome is next!  Sorry for the slowness of the updates, I finally had work to do the past 2 days.  I will post something about Rome later today!  I go to London on the 13th and I'll be sure to share.