Day 32: Prague/Krakow
Early this morning, I woke up around 4:30am to some of my roommates coming back from a pub crawl. After about 10 minutes, I leaned over and was about to ask them to turn off the light when I realized it was actually the sun coming through the window. I still can’t get used to how early the sun rises here.
I didn’t have anything left in Prague I really wanted to do so I spent the morning chatting on Facebook and the rest of the day wandering into different stores and taking pictures around Prague. I thought about buying an extra memory card but they wanted 1600 CZK (around 80 USD) for a 16 GB card – wasn’t going to happen.
For lunch, I grabbed a chicken skewer from a street vendor and watched part of the Honduras-Chile game in the town square. I then wandered back to my hostel, finished planning some things for Krakow, and then left for the train station at 8:00pm.
When I got to the train station, I realized I still had 400 Kc (20 USD) left so I bought a bag full of candy and some snacks for the road. I got on my train about 15 minutes before it left and was surprised with what it looked like inside. I have never taken an overnight train before so I wasn’t sure what to expect. The cabins were really small, with beds for six people. (The bed in the middle folds down).
There was a couple from Ireland who were also going to Krakow and sleeping in the same cabin as me. We stayed up talking until about 11:00pm, at which point a woman got on the train, entered our cabin, and immediately got ready for bed and turned off the lights. I took a picture of her while she was sleeping. After finishing up some work, I rolled over and went to sleep around 12:30am.
For those interested in the security of night trains, we had a pretty good lock on the inside of our cabin. It would have been tough for someone to break in without us noticing.
Some thoughts about Prague
I enjoyed Prague, but don’t think I enjoyed it as much as everyone else did. For many people, Prague was their favorite city, but I’d save that for Berlin or Paris. There wasn’t a ton of things to do, but the bone chapel was pretty interesting and the seeing the largest medieval castle in the world was pretty neat too.
I’ve noticed that the people in Prague have some of the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen – absolutely stunning. The currency took awhile to get used to: 1 USD = 20 CZK. You end up carrying around a bunch of coins in your pocket that you think are worthless, but can add up to over ten dollars. If I were to do it again, I might pick a hostel closer to the central square, but figuring out the train/metro system wasn’t too painful.