Czech It Out, It's The Castle!

Prague never lets you go… this dear little mother has sharp claws –Franz Kafka

Foodie moment

Since we spent most of the day today on the other side of the river at the castle, we were in unknown territory when it came to choosing a place to eat. Lucky for us we had the Trip Advisor app on my phone, so by using that we managed to find a nice restaurant of whose name I can't remember sorry. We had the chance to finally order some of the well known garlic soup, which was great! I then had the meat plate which has sausages. pork and dumplings (who would have guessed!) and Lisa had something a bit different with a pork stir fry Asian style. We also had once again our old friend Shopska Salad!

Cultural moment

As you're probably aware by now, Prague does meat, lots of meat, really really well. Its impossible to escape the smells of roasting pork from where ever you are in the city as there are spit roasts cooking everywhere. I was in a constant state of hunger just wanting to sink my teeth into a big juicy leg of pork or ham. We couldn't work out how any of the locals could keep their relatively skinny physiques, either they have different genes than us, or they just don't eat the food that the tourists eat. I'm pretty sure I put on a couple of kilograms in just the 3 days we were there.

Wow moment

Today we went to Prague Castle, the most dominant feature on the city's horizon, which sits on a hill overlooking the old town and river. We hiked up the quite steep road to get the the front gate upon which we were then presented with the best views of Prague so far. The castle itself is more of a walled city, with many large medieval buildings throughout. The most impressive being the St. Vitus Cathedral which is incredibly tall, its spires soaring over the tops of all the other buildings. As surprising as it may sound, we didn't go into any of the buildings or take any tours. We couldn't justify the prices and it was really busy with uncountable amounts of tour groups stampeding around. We did get to see the change of the guard however, closer than I probably should have been, being only a meter or two from the soldiers. We also walked around the Royal Gardens and moat and even got to witness a robotic lawn mower!

What we learnt today

The Lennon Wall in Prague is a wall that graffiti artists from all over the world have used as a supposed memorial to the Beatles artist John Lennon and all things love and peace. We went out of our way to find the wall, which is hidden in a side alley, and were pretty disappointed with what we actually saw. I'm sure in its day the wall actually had some meaningful pieces of art, but today its pretty much just a messy wall where people come to tag their name or anything else unrelated to John Lennon. You have to actually look hard to find anything Lennon related at all. They should probably think about changing the name to the Fred Wall as his name stands out the most!

We also learnt the the Charles Bridge is a whole lot better when you are looking at it, not from it. It's lost a lot of its romanticism with all of the comic sketch artists and beggars working in teams lining the sides. Luckily it is made of stone because there were 1000's of tourists (I know we are tourists too) walking along it. The view was amazing however and if you were keen enough to get up for sunrise, its meant to be spectacular.