We were really efficient in the morning and out the door around 8:30 for our drive to Prague. I don't remember exactly what time we arrived in Prague, but our first few hours there were downright miserable. We drove to our hotel, which wasn't ready for us to check-in which was fine. In her best English the lady at the desk directed me to a parking lot. But upon arriving at the parking lot we realized we needed to pay in cash, which is the Koruna Crown and we didn't have any. So we drove around looking for an ATM and then returned to the parking lot. We parked the car and then started walking back toward the hotel to catch the tram. Unfortunately there was no ticket office or kiosk at the tram station so we walked back to the hotel to ask where we would get tickets. Unfortunately the place suggested to us didn't sell children's tickets, so we had to walk even further to a metro station. It was so. hot. SO HOT. When we got to the metro station is was nice and cool down in the tunnel so we grabbed lunch at a little snack shop, bought our tickets and finally made our way into the city.
So we did the obvious thing and made our way up to the castle. It was up a hill and we were so hot we just walked as slowly as we could. Fortunately I had frozen all the plastic water bottles we had bought in Dresden and so we had a lot of cold water on hand.
And Prague is a really beautiful city. All the building facades are ornate, colorful and varied. It was really lovely. (And everything was really cheap!)
"The bridge is 621 m long and nearly 10 m wide, resting on 16 arches. It is protected by three bridge towers... The Old Town bridge tower is often considered to be one of the most astonishing civil gothic-style buildings in the world. The bridge is decorated by a continuous alley of 30 statues and statuaries, most of them baroque-style, originally erected around 1700 but now all replaced by replicas."
Mmmmmm. Our dinner. It took a little while but eventually we found a place offering authentic Czech food and it was soooo good. It was probably my favorite meal. It wasn't air conditioned in the building, but it was cooler than outside, and after so much walking it felt so nice to relax. I had beef goulash with white bread dumplings, the kids had schnitzel, and Richard had pork with potato dumplings. It was all really delicious. After dinner we needed to pick up a few practical things like another outlet adapter, so we did some quick shopping and then I begged the kids to hold out for one more stop.