Prague in Pictures

Hey all! I am almost finished switching from Flickr to Picasa, but I am still trying to figure out the privacy settings so it is easier for people to navigate, hopefully I'll be able to post some links soon. I did finish uploading all of my pictures from Prague, and I wanted to share some of them here. I think the best way to do this is to repost what I wrote about Prague before, but with more detail and the photos added in. So without further ado...

Last weekend was one of the best so far! Thursday (6/11) was another holiday, so Wednesday night I met Greg in Prague, and we had a blast. Wednesday night we just wandered around, trying to figure out the crazy Czech streets.

We found this giant chair to take a break in:


Prague is a strange city, because the Old Town is gorgeous, the most impressive collection of architecture I have ever seen, but it is so overrun with tacky tourism everywhere. It's like Disneyland for Eurotravelers. There is a ton to see and do though, and we tried to fit in as much as possible. Thursday we visited the National Museum, a natural history museum with an incredibly large collection of minerals, animal specimens, and archaeological finds.

The museum:


We also got in a fair amount of shopping on the main shopping drag before heading back to the Old Town and checking out the view from the Old Town Hall Tower.

The tower:


The view, with the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn:


Thursday night after dinner we found the Lennon wall, a stretch of concrete wall that has been a canvas for graffiti since the 80's. People mostly leave tributes to John Lennon and thoughts about peace, love and togetherness, but other people use the wall as a place to air political grievances.

A section of the wall:


Friday rained on and off all day, and we went to the zoo and botanical gardens. The zoo was amazing! It is the #7 zoo in the world, and it showed. The enclosures were amazingly designed, and the cool weather meant most of the animals were up and active, even interacting with the guests.

The giraffes were amazing:


And this tiger was having a great time with lunch:


The botanical gardens were breathtaking, especially the meticulously designed Japanese Garden and the tropical greenhouse. I got a lot of use out of my camera's digital macro taking closeups of incredible flowers.

These were taken in the Japanese Garden:



While these were inside the greenhouse:



Saturday we decided to do the standard tourism things, and took a free walking tour of Prague given by New Europe, a great tourism company for college-aged backpackers. We walked through the Old Town and the Jewish Quarter, ending up by the river.

In the Jewish Quarter, with our guide in red:


Prague Castle from the river:


We also hiked up to Prague Castle, which was more exciting to see from a distance than to actually visit, especially since the main attraction, St. Vitus' Cathedral, was closed.

The palace gates:


We did find a great little cafe to eat dinner in, and chatted with some Americans there who work in a hotel near the Palace. Saturday night we went on a Pub Crawl and had a great time hanging out with other young travelers. Sunday we kicked back, Greg left in the early afternoon and I did some last minute sight-seeing, visited the Alphonse Mucha Museum and then lazed away the afternoon with a book by the river.

My grassy retreat:


I enjoyed one last goulash that evening before catching my ride home at 8, and slept most of the way home! To see more of the pictures I took (this is just a small sample) you can check out the whole album: