On the flight over, everyone was drinking something called Becherovka. We tried it. It wasn't our thing.

Our hotel was pretty lame, but had some interesting signs around. And we weren't too far from a metro.

Our first trip out was to Wenceslas Square, where we visited the National Museum. It was natural history museum. Only their animals looked a little weird.

Walking around we were struck by the gorgeous streets, the whimsical public art, the ubiquity of hard liquor, and the neat manhole covers.

We went to several more museums where they wouldn't let us take pictures, but we did manage to photograph the Powder Tower, the astrological clock, the Tyn Church, and the Charles Bridge (by day and night), where we found a a statue of Jesus, as well as a Grimace balloon.

St. Vitus Cathedral was quite grand, with its stained glass windows by Mucha, its weird underground section, and its crazy high bell tower that took us a million years to climb. When we got there, we were so tired, we needed to rest. So we took some pictures of us as well as some picture of them.

(back)

Prague Castle was pretty sprawling. It had a big jousting area, a nice balcony area, and many people inside taking pictures.

In the Jewish Quarter we learned all about how lousy it was to be a Jew in medieval Europe. We saw the Old New Synagogue, and even took some sneaky pictures inside. We visited the Jewish cemetery, the Meiselova Synagogue, and the freaky burial society, where I used the a paytoilet for 9 Czech Crowns.

Food proved to be a bit of a problem, especially because I am a vegetarian, and could not speak the language. There was, however, plenty of beer, and beer, and beer, and beer. We visited an olde timey pub, and one that was frequented by the writer Bohumil Hrabal, who accidently jumped out the window one day and died.

At one point Brian tried to make me go on a nature hike. But all we ended up seeing was trash, so we got into a fight. We did, however, manage to have dinner in a DVD bar (whatever that is), and we got to see some profane graffiti, some interesting graffiti, and some graffiti we didn't quite understand. We were also lucky enough to find what no trip abroad is complete without: a large picture of the former World Trade Center.