Prague

Did not get any sleep Thursday night due to the fact that we had to get up at 3:30 and take a bus to Stansted airport. for a 7 AM flight. The flight to Prague was about two hours and we pretty much slept the entire time. To give you an idea of how we got from the airport to Newk's friend's apartment (where we were staying) Here are the directions that he gave us because he had been their for a day already:

"gotta buy a train/bus ticket at the airport, buy the 26 crown tickets not the all-day pass. Get on the number 119 bus and take it to the end. Then follow the general flow of traffic to the metro station, ur guys bus tickets are good for that too. Hop on the train that goes to Mustek stop. This is where it gets real tricky and I was lost doing this part for awhile. There are three or four exits to the street at this stop so pick one and either find Valclavske or Ne Mastek or ask somebody. Both those streets will turn into Melantrichova street. Take that, then a left on Vejvodova. This is the hardest part and I kinda wandered after taking the left until I randomly stumbled upon their street: Michalska. Their flat is number 13 on the left, the numbers are kind of out of order, not to add insult to injury. You are going to be have to let up so buzz the number c.7 doorbell. Let me know when u get this and also let me know what time your flight is scheduled to land tomorrow. Meryl's cell number is +420 7316 72 999 if you have any problems. I lost my cell phone today so don't bother trying that. Good luck i tried making the directions as painless as possible even though thats a tough task. Peace"

Riiiiight Newk. Favorite part of these directions: "There are three or four exits to the street at this stop so pick one" The hilarious part about this is that we did find the apartement that we were staying at very easily.

When we got there, we decided to walk around for a while and Meryle (Newk's friend) gave us a walking tour of the city She took us to Old Square which is a touristy area where there is a famous clock which is a big attraction. She walked us over the Charles Bridge and took us to what is known as the Lennon Wall that is a large grafitti mural. From there she took us to the Prague castle at the top of a large hill that overlooked the city. Barack Obama actually gave a speech there on Sunday, and though we were not able to go to it, we were able to see people setting up for it which was cool.

Being dead tired from not sleeping the night before, all of us took a nap in the late afternoon. After waking us groggy, we went to dinner and then back to Meryle's apartment. She then took us to a very cool wine bar (almost like our favorite one here in London) where we drank cheap wine and met a lot of people from all over. Newk claims to have swayed the opinions of some Czech people from that of them hating Americans to them liking Americans (but Newk likes to make things up). From there, we went to another kind of local spot where we stayed out entirly too late.

Saturday, we did more of the same because Meryle had one of her friend's come in town. Saturday night we went to a 5 story Euro club that played different music on every floor. Pretty cool.

Final thoughts on Prague: It was one of my favorite cities that I have been too. I have heard it is very cold though, luckily it was about 75 degrees and sunny while we were there which definately made it better. In my opinion, Prague was a combination of a lot of cities that I have been to: it had a flair of Madrid, a little bit of Venice, Munich, and London. One of the major difficulties that we had there was the language barrier. Who speaks Czech? It seems impossible to learn as well. Overall it was a great weekend!

Cheers,

Paul

p.s. my friends were on CNN: http://ht.cdn.turner.com/cnn/big/podcasts/ac360/video/2009/04/03/cooper.podcast.new.thursday.cnn.m4v

they are about a quarter of the way through. Pretty cool