An Eurasian Jay in Eastern Europe

Oct 17, 2017

4 min read

Yes, I did google birds of Prague. Did you know the Eurasian Jay is a thing? You do now. Also, sorry for the long post, but this trip was amazing and I would much rather be in Prague this semester than Spain.

On Sunday, Chris and I got back from our four-ish day trip to Prague and Vienna. I say four-ish because we arrived in Prague on the evening of Friday, October 12th (my birthday!) and left on Sunday morning at 5am, so there were really only two days of sight seeing and very little sleep.

On Friday we arrived at the airport in Prague and the fist indication that the trip was going to be great was the "M&M's World" at the airport. Yes. This means there were big 1 Kg bags of M&M's. I GOT MY M&M'S!!!!!! Anyway, we arrived at the hostel (honestly the best one we have stayed at yet- the Plus Prague Hostel) and headed out to dinner at a traditional Czech Restaurant and had some steak, dumplings, and potato pancakes. They didn't taste taste like the ones from home, but they were delicious!! The next morning, we headed to Prague Castle. After walking up about 1000 steps, we discovered that they were filming some movie in the square. Unfortunately, we have no idea what the movie was.

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Prague Castle is more of an entire village than a simple castle. The castle grounds contain a small village of preserved houses and businesses as well as a palace and two churches. One is St. Vitus Cathedral, which is probably the most spectacular church I've ever seen. It was so beautiful and was a beautiful example of Gothic architecture, with huge stained-glass windows and towering flying buttresses.

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The other church, St. George's Basilica, was much more subdued. It was beautiful, but the facade did not match with the interior. I know that the original basilica was founded in 920 AD, enlarged in 973, rebuilt after a fire in 1142, and had a baroque facade created in the 17th century. That's wikipedia for you. In my opinion, the baroque facade is completely unnecessary. It does not fit with the interior at all. The interior is so old, and I'm sure parts of it are original.

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We headed to the old palace and the Golden Lane and did some souvenir shopping for our families and Christian shot a crossbow, and did pretty well! We saw the super old weapons in the museum on Golden Lane and the amazing view from the old palace before heading out to lunch and getting more traditional Czech food. I swear we ate everything- CZECH out the "eat" page soon because I will be updating that page soon. But I have updated the Prague and Vienna "Where in the World" pages, so take a look at those for details and pictures!

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We wandered around And got some dessert and saw the Lennon Wall and Charles Bridge on our way to Powder tower, which we thought was closed because of signs in Prague Castle, but when we got there, it was open and we got to go to the top! I really thought the views of the city couldn't get better, but the views from Powder Tower and sunset were truly unbeatable.

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The last important place we went was the Dancing House. I have always wanted to see the Dancing House in real life. It is probably one of my favorite buildings by Gehry and was just as spectacular in person as I have always imagined. Following our "Be the Art" experience in Zaragoza, Chris an I became the Dancing House! And the cutie is Vitus the hippo! I definitely plan on returning to Prague again soon to see the Prague Zoo, which is the 4th largest zoo in Europe and my awesome pen pall who I didn't get to see because she had to work.

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We pulled an all nighter and took a 2:30 am bus to Vienna. It was a rough night. But you only pull a crazy night in Prague like once in your life, so why not now. In Vienna, we headed to the Spanish Riding School to see the performance that Chris ha always wanted to see. It wasn't the most exciting thing in the world, but it was super cool. We also went to the architectural tour of the school , which was weird because we couldn't understand the guide since he was speaking in German. Honesty, Vienna just flew by. We saw a couple other buildings, but since I only knew a couple cool places in Vienna, this wasn't my favorite part. I did enjoy getting to go to the Hundertwasser House, which is basically an interestingly designed apartment building with the a crazy facade. Our last stop of the night was the giant Ferris wheel in Vienna. You know I am all for the best view in the city and this was definitely it. Of course I made Christian get Traditional food from Vienna for dinner. When in Vienna, right?