Nameless.

A nameless blog for a somewhat aimless day.  A guidebook I read at some point said the best time to visit Charles Bridge was dawn - before it got flooded with tourists.  Having passed by it a couple of times in the last few days we thought that sounded like a good idea.  We didn't manage dawn, because around here its some stupid time like 5 am.  However we did make it there by around 7.30, and there were a few tourists around, but not many.  It was also quite nice to see the city that early, and it was shaping up to be a beautiful day.

It remained a beautiful day, almost too beautiful as there was little shade to be had up at the castle.  Which is where we spent the rest of the morning.  We walked from the hostel to the castle, coming in the back entrance some what by accident (wandering a bit far on a street one step to far over, but as is Pragues way ending up there anyway).  We wandered about the grounds for a while, in search of the guards.  It was a great place, I liked how it was a palace surrounded by tons of buildings, the way you think of those old set ups being, not just an isolated castle.  Anyway we found some guards, but it was still too early for the supposed noon changing, so we walked on down to the bottom hoping to find an entrance to the gardens, which we didn't.  We did manage to find a seat though upon which to sit and read for an hour.  After being slightly shuffled off by some old people we managed the hike back up to wait for noon.  Now the changing of the guard has been about the only thing I had planned to see before I left, it was mentioned in a guide book that theres an amazing fanfare of pomp and ceremony in the 12 o'clock changing of the guard.  At almost 12.10 we thought, damn we must have got the wrong guard station or something, and began to wander off, when we ran into the new guards coming the other way.  It wasn't quite the spectacule I was expecting, but it was still fun, and funny.  I have to say though I felt incredibly sorry for those guards, watching as all these tourists wandered around in shorts with ice creams, posing for photos with them, while they had to stand there, in their jackets and pants and hats and white gloves, standing still.  Torture for me.

Post guard watching we tried again to get into the gardens, the aim being to read/sleep away the afternoon in a pleasant surrounding.  We did get a little way down, but discovered you had to pay to get down to the bottom, and they didn't look like quite what we were after so we changed our minds and headed off to get an ice cream and sit in the senate gardens again while we ate it.  Then true to Prague fashion, we decided to see if we could walk along that side of the river till we got to one of the bridges further down, just to see something different, and we came across a perfect little park.  So we lay down and went to sleep for an hour.  I will say one thing for European parks and grass, they're full of bloody ants, not so good for the rest factor.

I've gotten quite used to what appears to be the Czech way of pedestrians crossing roads.  Perhaps a little too used to it.  Cars don't often seem to stop at pedestrian crossings, pedestrians just walk out into the middle of the road and assume that if they do the car will stop.  Which it does.  It's a nerve racking way to cross the bigger roads, but it seems to work.

What also worked here, though perhaps not quite so well, was hostel dinners.  We had two, and of course had problems with both, but managed to turn out something edible and not too bad tasting.  Yesterdays issues were that we discovered the bag of veges we'd bought had cooking instructions, we still ate them raw, but they did taste better when we cooked them up for a stirfry tonight.  Yesterdays other problem was that this place didn't have a can opener, which baffled us.  A potato masher but no can opener.  So we couldn't add our can of tomatos to our pasta, but still, edible.  Tonight we just had issues with cooking the rice, and dodging around the other 2 guys cooking at the same time.  But they offered to do our dishes for us so I'm not complaining.  In fact I'm rather thankful, we couldn't quite believe our luck.

So here I am in bed, last night in Prague.  Another early start in the morning to make it to the bus, but at least its only a short one tomorrow, we should be in Cesky by around 12.