In Prague, Czech Republic!

For reference, "Přihlásit se" means "sign in". The clever people at Google know I'm in the Czech Republic, so have changed all the Google sites into Czech for me (until I sign in, then it changes back to English).

We left the US on Friday, flew to London, then Zurich, and picked up a hire car in Zurich and drove to Prague. We had some delays, so we didn't get to our hotel in Prague until 1:30am, but that was ok. It was a really nice drive - nice, fast highways, gorgeous scenery - quaint little houses in Switzerland, snow capped mountains in Austria (wow, I typed Australia initially...) and green, pretty farmland in Germany.

Sunday we finally dragged ourselves out of bed after midday, went for a wander in the streets near the hotel, and weren't immediately impressed. It was shabby old rather than "historic old". We then found the Metro, and figured out how to get to Prague Castle. Once we stepped out of the Metro, we knew we'd found the historic Prague. Beautiful old churches, castle, palaces, cobblestones. Gorgeous. We were near closing time at the castle, so only got to wander around the grounds, but that was still impressive. We poked our heads into St Vitus Cathedral which took our breath away. It is located within Prague Castle itself, and is the biggest and most important church in the country as it contains the tombs of royalty.

The stained glass windows were beautiful, the architecture (Gothic style) was so incredibly intricate, and the church just felt sacred. There was a choir walking through the church when we arrived, and they were at the opposite end of the church to us initially, and the sound carried so well, and really set the atmosphere.

After that we were going to wander back toward the Metro, but we were stopped by people selling tickets to a "Castle Gala Concert". Members of the Prague Royal Orchestra were going to be playing Pachelbel, Mozart and Vivaldi in St George's Basilica. We figured why not?

St George's Basilica was a beautiful old building. It's a church within the castle grounds, and is long and narrow, with a raised platform at the front. The atmosphere was beautifully haunting, and of course the acoustics made the music even more lovely.

Monday was the first day of Andrew's conference, but I had to get an assignment finished, so I worked on that all day. In the evening we went for a walk toward where we heard was a nice restaurant. We're staying in Vyšehrad which turns out has a castle - aptly named Vyšehrad Castle. So we wandered through the grounds, found another beautiful old church as well as a gorgeous cemetery where the like of composer Antonín Dvořák are buried. The restaurant we found (Rio Vyšehrad) was also really nice - great quality, cheap food (as opposed to the hotel's ok, bloody expensive food).

Yesterday I worked some more on my assignment, then at lunchtime, made my way back to the castle to have another explore - this time taking photos. I got to have a good poke around in St George's Basilica and St. Vitus Cathedral (including walking up the 287 step tight, spiral staircase to get to the top of the clocktower) as well as explore some of the other buildings within the castle. It kind of blows your mind that some of these buildings are around 1000 years old.

Today's plan is to put the references into my assignment, then head back into the city to try and find a post office to post the assignment (that will be an adventure!). It's cold and wet today, so will try to find some indoor activities to do.