PRAGUE

I love Prague.  

No really.  Its great.  The train from Vienna was uneventful, the countryside was really pretty and the ticket taker on the train looked exactly like Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter.  We took the metro towards our hostel and walked for 20 minutes in the wrong direction before figuring it out.  Turns out, our hostel is about 30 seconds away from the Old Town Square.  We got settled and ended up chatting with two girls that were sharing our room.  This hostel (and this city) is full of normal people and college guys who came here to party.  We had dinner down the street and we found out two main things: 1) beer is cheaper than water in Prague 2) the translation "cream sauce" means it comes with whipped cream on top.  So, I had a beef dish with "cream sauce" that I scraped off, and dumplings and mer had pork.  All in all, really tasty.  We went out with the girls who were staying in our room and it was so fun!  

We had a low day the next day, gave ourselves a day off, really.  We walked around Old Town Square and the Charles bridge.  The astrological clock in Old Town Square is really cool, we watched the hour change and tried to decipher all the different rings.  We watched a movie in our hostel and met some more nice people.  We had sausage for dinner and went to bed early.  The next morning we woke up super early and learned that nothing (not even starbucks) opens before 9.  Where do people get their coffee?  No clue.  We walked to the castle and toured it as well as the cathedral, basilica, and Golden Lane.  We walked down to the Little quarter and went to the John Lennon wall.  We had a great lunch at Bohemia Bagel (can't eat meat and potatoes for every meal...) and walked back across the Charles bridge.  We toured the Jewish quarter next.  The large majority of the Jewish population was deported and killed by the Nazis, but they didn't destroy the area during the occupation, which makes it a pretty powerful place to visit.  

We fly to Athens tomorrow and weather.com says its going to be super hot!  I wish I had more time to explore Prague, but that just means I will definitely need to come back here.  So far, each city has been getting better and better, so hopefully Athens will continue the trend!

Vienna

The boat from Budapest to Vienna was fun.  It took about 5 hours and wasn't that scenic, but it was nice to be on a boat for a while!  We went through 2 giant locks on the Danube, which was cool.  We took the metro to our hostel, which was easy to find, and settled into our basement room.  Thus far our hostel roommates have been less than satisfactory.  Everyone is just a little weird.  In this particular room there was a canadian guy who was by himself (normal enough) and this foreign couple (not sure where they were from as they didn't speak english, but they spoke french every now and then) that were way too friendly with each other.  We called them the "amorous pair".  

Well, Vienna was just great.  Our hostel was midway between the old town and the Schonbrunn palace.  We had really bad chinese food the first night we were there and went to bed early.  Next day, we walked into the old town and went through the huge museum of Hapsburg art.  We followed Rick's walking tour and saw the opera, the church, and various old things.  We had sausages for lunch in the big square and continued walking around.  There was a random parade that day, so there was a lot of lederhosen and other traditional costumes.  I think it had something to do with Pentecost.  In Europe, everyone takes the Monday after Pentecost Sunday, for some reason, so everything was closed.  No shopping for us!  We ducked into the Hofburg palace to see the treasury, which was a giant museum full of shiny things and huge jewels.  We were so pooped after this day---so much walking!  We did laundry and had take out pizza in our hostel for dinner.  For some reason, the people we room with really liked to go to bed at about 9:30 and turn off all the lights.

We got a later start the next morning and walked to the Schonbrunn palace.  We did the whole tour, which was really cool.  The Hapsburgs are a really interesting family and they really liked to decorate.  It was kind of like Versailles, but in Vienna.  There was a lot of eastern influence in the interior because it was oh so fashionable at the time.  We walked through the garden afterwards and had lunch (salad and sausage) at one of the stands.  Then we headed towards the military museum on the other side of town.  It took forever to find, but we had a nice detour through a great public park.  We found the museum, but the ticket taker informed us they were only open for another hour.  We did the museum super fast, which was fine because there weren't any english translations, and no matter how long I stared at the german, it never made sense.  We did get to see the car that Archduke Ferdinand was sitting in when he got shot.

 Vienna was really different from Budapest.  It was much more like Paris in that it was fancier.  It wasn't bombed as heavily during World War II, so more things are original.  There were people out everywhere and it felt very safe.  All in all, a cool town.