Wednesday
We arrived a bit later than we were supposed to on Wednesday night. After being dropped off at our hotel (conveniently located between the red light district and the biggest tourist area) we started yet another pub crawl! Our tour guide was a 21 year-old local who took us to his favorite places. The first one was an old brothel where we were treated to a traditional meal of goulash with dumplings.
The next place used to be where the executioner of the city lived a few hundred years ago. The beer was fantastic, some of the best I've ever had.
Our last stop was an underground place pub we tried the last of the 3 main types of Czech beer, what our guide referred to as light (traditional pilsner, which comes from the city of Pilsen in Czech Republic) medium/middle (bitter pilsner, almost a pale ale) and dark (stout, the great one I mentioned earlier) This place had famous cartoons from a local artist all over the walls. Slightly on the vulgar side.
The girls wanted to go home and sleep, lame, so the guys went to explore the city. We walked along the river which had fantastic views of the castle and cathedral and found our way back to the hotel about an hour or so later...After having some fried cheese of course. Probably the best late night food imaginable. A piece of mozzarella deep fried and covered in mayo. After a small taste of the city I was really excited for the next two days.
Thursday
First order of business was to go on a walking tour of the city. I had wanted to wake up early to try and find a nice Czech breakfast, but our pub crawl guide told us those don't exist. He said everyone either eats at home or picks something up at the grocery store. We saw pretty much all of the touristy sites in the city. Starting with Wencelas Square and the Old Quarter, we moved on to the Jewish Quarter, Charles Bridge, the castle and the cathedral. Since the Nazis took over early off in the war and there were rumors that Hitler wanted the Castle for himself, nothing was destroyed during WWII. It's really cool seeing a city that has buildings from the 14th century in great condition.
We had lunch on our own before visiting the Czech Beer and Malt Association so a bunch of us found a place by the Charles Bridge. I would call it Czech Fusion, the food was amazing. When the bill came he charged us for the marinated duck, instead of the grilled duck which four of us had. The marinated duck was 4 times the price so one of the guys in the group had to argue with the waiter. The school had given us money for lunch and the bill was only about $20 a person but it was the principle of the matter. The waiter wouldn't budge even though he was clearly trying to rip us off so we gave him money for what we actually ordered and walked out.
The CBMA is in charge of all the breweries in the Czech Republic. The CEO gave us a presentation in which he kept reiterating the health benefits of drinking a pint or more a day, saying that all doctors recommend this and it gives you much needed proteins. I guess the Czech people take this to heart because they have the highest beer consumption rate in the world. 160L per year for the average person. That's a pint every day. The world and US average is 80L, less than one beer a day.
He then gave us a tour of Staropramen, the second biggest brewery in the country.
After dinner we went out to a restaurant for crepes and beer. Unfortunately it was raining pretty hard so none of us wanted to go searching for a bar afterwards.
Friday
We visited the Czech T-Mobile headquarters which has about 80% of the market in the country. Then lunch at the Prague TV Tower, a weird space-ship looking thing that has metal babies crawling over it. Yes, babies.
This was the official end of our study tour so some people left to continue their travels-almost everyone is going to Italy-and the rest of us had 5 hours to kill before our long bus ride home. 2 of my friends were leaving and the girls just wanted to go shopping then sit at the hotel. Melissa and I wanted to do something fun and I had written down some stuff that I researched before. We chose to go to an old monastery that brewed beer. We took the metro and the tram to get there, and that only took 20 minutes! Prague is the same size, if not smaller than Copenhagen. The monks are long gone but the brewery remains in the form of a restaurant. All the beers are seasonal, so we had all four that were available. Great, but not amazing.
The walk back was incredible. The monastery was right by the castle on top of the hill so in 2 hours we saw the entire city from both sides. After doing some souvenir shopping we went back to the executioner's pub for dinner. One of the things we were told to try was pickled sausage. We found it on the menu for $2! It was literally picked, soaked in vinegar with a pickle shoved in the middle. So our evening which consisted of 3 beers each and a meal each came to about $15! Prague is amazing, definitely one of the coolest cities I've ever been to, I can't think of any place remotely similar.
The bus ride back was 14 hours! At least it was at night so I slept about half the time. What a great week!
