Springtime in Praha!!

The past month or so has been absolutely GLORIOUS in Prague!  Some days you can even get away with shorts!!  The skies are blue, it's so sunny, and spring is most definitely in the air!  My friends and I have been enjoying the beer gardens, which were opened about a month early for the lovely weather!

One of the first really nice weekends we went paddle boating on the river, it was SO much fun, and I gotsome really cool pictures!!

The National Theater

I went and saw Puccini's La Boheme at the State Theater with a friend, and I loved it!  It is so nice to be able to go to operas and ballets whenever you want and not have to break the bank.  We got pretty decent seats and paid about $6 a piece!  Far more entertaining and gratifying for a movie that would cost twice as much!  

Inside the State Theater

Letna Park - Beer Gardens at Sunset

Sunset at Letna Park

I've been having a lot of fun in Prague this spring!  After hibernating a bit during the winter, we've been going out quite a bit more and having a blast!  Definitely putting a hurtin of the old wallet, but why else earn money than to have fun spending it, right? 

 And on that note, faithful follower, I shall leave you yet again.  Just have to catch up on one last trip, and I'll be back to present for another fleeting moment.

MADRID!!!!

The first week of February was my spring break, and I spent it in lovely Espana!  I spent eight days in Madrid, and had a blast!  The weather was beautiful, and I spent everyday walking the streets, taking in the sights, and eating INCREDIBLE food.  We went down Gran Via, to Puerta Del Sol, Plaza Mayor, we walked all over the city going to different restaurants, bars, sights, and friends' houses.  Even on a budget it was easy to enjoy tapas, paella, boccadillos, and of course Spanish wine.  

One afternoon we went to the San Miguel food market for lunch, and it was absolutely fantastic.  There were stalls with everything from pastries to empanadas, kebabs, fish, you name it, all served in small tapas portions.  You just walk around the market, sampling a bit of each, not to mention the fantastic wine stalls.  Absolute perfection.

San Miguel Market

We spent another day walking around Retiro Park.  It is absolutely HUGE, and I was shocked to see palm trees!  I never expected to see palm trees anywhere in Europe, it was great!  Anyhow, this park is absolutely ginormous and has all these paths criss crossing all over it.  After walking for ten minutes or so, we ran into this glass palace in the middle of the park.  It was right on a lake, and so beautiful.  I didn't really get a good shot of it, but it was cool.  Believe me.

  

This picture was taken from google, when we went there there was this navy blue layer about two feet inside the glass walls all the way around the building.  There were small holes in the blue and it looked like millions of tiny stars.  

Glass Palace when I saw it

We spent everyday walking all around the city, taking on the sites.  Some of which I don't know the names for.  Cool nonetheless.

Cathedral of Almudena.  

We went inside the Cathedral of Almudena, a Gothic cathedral with the most fantastic, colorful interior I've ever seen!  Amazingly bright paintings on the inside of the ceiling, walls, dome, stained glass... I got a picture of the glass casting a rainbow on the floor!

Exterior of Cathedral of Almudena

Madrid Palace

Kilometer Zero - Puerta del Sol

We definitely took in our fair share of the night life in Madrid as well.  We would generally eat a late dinner, go to a friend's house for drinks, then go out dancing.  SO much fun!  I was in town for the Super Bowl too, and good Americans that we are we went to a bar and watched the game, 1AM kickoff and all!  I ended up making 10 Euros on a bar bet on the game!  All in all, pretty awesome night.

My last day in town we went to El Prado, which was fantastic!!!  Art Historian that I am, I had an amazing time (not ENOUGH time!!  Absolutely must go back) wandering the halls.  So many works of art that I have studied, researched, and written about were inside those walls.  I saw a great number of them, but know that I'm going to have to go back and spend more time in the future.  We had just made it to the basement level, and I discovered that Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights was there!  SUCH a fascinating piece, and it's absolutely MASSIVE!  I could have spent a while just studying, but tragically the museum was closing and the guard literally escorted me out of the room.  Tragedy.

All in all, I would have to say it was an amazing trip!  Must go back soon :)

January

You know your blog posts are overdue when you have to check your facebook timeline and bank statements to remember what you did in January.....

The Result:  not much.

Winter was in full force.  It snowed a couple of times in the city center, but nothing stuck on the ground unless you were in the outskirts.  I teach a number of classes that are 30 or 40 minutes outside of the city center, so I got my fill of the snow!  Before now, I have never lived anywhere with a real winter (or seasons that change for that matter) so it was quite intense.  I wore about 4 layers everyday and had some hardcore winter boots that I practically lived in.  I was actually surprised at how well I survived the winter.  I wasn't happy about it, but I didn't die!!  Now I recall why I don't have much to report in January; I spent the most unpleasant parts of the season hibernating indoors.  Aside from work and necessarry grocery runs, I didn't leave the house much to avoid freezing to death.  Luckily they heat the trams and busses and metros here, so it was really just a matter of dashing between the modes of public transport.  I did get some nice snowy pictures tho!

I'm sure I'm forgetting some fun pub outings and whatnot, but not too much went down in January.  I am super proud of myself because I was warned by the Prague vets that I was going to fall down in the icy/snowy/sludgy mess at least once, and that I was going to step in dog poop at least once (people never pick up after their dogs here.  easy to avoid most of the year, a bit trickier when everythings covered in snow) but NEITHER of those events I had been dreading happened!!  I had a couple of close calls slipping on ice while hurrying to catch a tram, but no actual falls!  All in all, I'd say I survived the winter quite well.

NEW YEARS!!!

My brother came back to Prague with me to stay for a week or so around New Years.  We had an amazing time, I took him sight seeing during the day to Prague Castle, St. Vitus, Charles Bridge and all the other Prague-ian sites.  Then we went to all my favorite bars and restaurants in the evenings.  He was especially enamored with The Pub, a bar with beer taps on every table and you get to pour your own drafts. 

At Pivovarsky Dum, an awesome brewery.

My brother and I had a similar visit two winters ago when I was living in Florence, and we both discovered our mutual love of Kebabs (in the european/middle eastern sense.  not the skewers of meat on a grill)  After our trip to the above brewery, we went to my favorite Kebab place in town and reminisced about times past.

Photo op on the walk up to Prague Castle, view of Mala Strana behind us

At U Sudu with some friends

This is definately one of my favorite bars in Prague, and as such definately made the list of must-see places.  It is called U Sudu, which means the cask in czech.  The top floor is a very small, narrow wine bar that looks like its maximum occupancy is about 15 people, including the bartender.  But if you walk down the tiny walkway and around a corner, you see an ominous set of stairs winding down.  Downstairs you end up in the first of many big caves (previous wine cellar for the above bar).  There are four large caves connected by tunnel-like passages.  There are two different bars down there, and one cave devoted entirely to Foosball tables (they take their Foosball very seriously here...) We spent a while down in the cave until the smoke from everyone's cigarettes was so concentrated it made your eyes burn, at which point we surfaced for fresh air and a change of venue.

The next day was the 30th of December.  A friend of mine came into town from Germany to join in on the New Years festivities.  The three of us had a pseudo-classy evening at the Opera watching Carmen (it was AMAZING) before heading to The Pub to meet up with some friends and pour copious amounts of beers for ourselves.  It was a lovely preamble to a rediculous New Years....

On New Years Eve, a big group of us went to a local pub for some food and beers.  We all had very delicious, hearty, traditional Czech meals which allowed for the overzealous drinking which was about to occur... We stayed there for a few hours, then at around 11 we headed back to my apartment to grab some champagne and fireworks.  My roommate was having a party at the apartment, so of course we stayed for a few shots of Becherovka (imagine Jaagermeister with more cinnamon....)  We left in time to make it to the river for the fireworks at midnight which were FANTASTIC!! They must have gone on for a full ten minutes, it was amazing!  And all of my friends had the same idea and brought champagne, so we pretty much ended up with a bottle apiece for the show.

After the fireworks we headed off to find a bar.  Somehow I ended up at the head of the group, and when I saw strings of flashing lights I was drawn to this bar like a moth to a flame.  We all went inside and grabbed drinks.  It was absolutely PACKED and was a lot of fun.  I started looking around, and felt a strong sense of Deja-vu... Everything looked curiously familiar, and then it hit me.  We were in O'Che's, the bar I have been wanting to go to and trying to convince my friends to go to (it's in the center and more expensive than the places we frequent) since I arrived.  I had made it there once before when my parents were in town and we were drawn (again like moths to a flame) to the Guinness sign outside, only to discover it was O'Che's after settling inside and commenting on the amount of Che Guevara posters.  Apparently I can only find this bar when I don't know I'm going there, like some kind of booze filled bermuda triangle...

At O'Che's.  This picture makes me laugh, I think my brother's worried someone will take his last sip of beer...

Still at O'Che's

O'Che's was crazy packed tho, and rather pricey, so after a drink or two we headed out to find somewhere else.  We finished the night at a small bar whose name I don't remember.  Then had a lovely 6AM walk home.

End of the night

It was quite the successful New Years, full of amazing people and unforgettable moments.  We paid dearly for the copious amounts of booze on New Years day, staying in bed and watching movies on my laptop as penance.  Then, sadly, my brother went back home and I went back to work.

It's about time...

To catch up yet again.  Wow, I'm really bad at the regular-blogging thing.  Time to make 5 catch-up posts in one day and then disappear for another few months...

So.  CHRISTMAS!!!

I got two weeks off work for my Christmas break, and I spent one of my weeks home with the family in Florida.  It hadn't been snowing in the city center of Prague, but it was still crazy cold and a week of sunshine was a blessed reprieve!  I even got a Christmas tan!
The family and I spent the week making amazing meals, drinking beers (which were entirely disappointing after living in Prague.  Even buying Pilsner Urquell back home doesnt taste the same...) and going out on the boat.  I spent my days soaking up all the sunshine I could, and eating as much sushi as humanly possible!

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I truly believe it.  I remember living in Florida and saying things like "I can't go outside, it's too hot/sunny/humid out."  You never realize how much you will miss things like the sun and blue skies until you don't have them!  I made up for my earlier nonchalance by spending every waking minute outside during my Christmas break, and it was AMAZING!!!

We had a lovely holiday filled with amazing people food and memories, then on the 26th my brother flew back to Prague with me for what would be my most epic New Years yet :D

aaaaand we're caught up...

So, let's see what all I can remember from the past...four weeks.

I went on a trip to the wine country in Moravia with a bunch of my coworkers, which was pretty epic.  It was a 2 or 3 hour drive from prague into southeastern Czech Republic.  I may be recounting this out of order, because I'm now remembering that this was the week before St. Martin's day (Nov 12th?ish?).  St. Martin's day is the first day of the year that that vintage of wine is available to buy and drink, so we ended up jumping the gun on the wine trip a bit.  As it happened, they had some of this year's vintage for us to taste, but it wasn't official because it was a week early... or something.  The people who ran the vineyard only spoke Czech, so all that I know was delivered in fragmented translations.  Either way, the wine was delicious, and we had far more than should be acceptable at a wine tasting weekend.

All of us in the wine cellar

A few days after the wine weekend, I went back to the State Theater with another friend of mine, and this time we saw Swan Lake.  It was fantastic!! And afterwards I was inspired to watch Black Swan, which was also fantastic, but in a very different way... Anyhow, for this excursion we knew what to expect, and we both had fun dressing up and having a classy evening :D Probably the classiest part was when we stopped at a food cart on the way home and got fried cheese sandwiches.  They're pretty big here, and they're about as heart-stoppingly delicious as you could imagine.

Later that week, I went to a night club nearby where they were having all of these different Czech rappers do live sets.  It was pretty awesome.  My Czech friends were rather impressed that I enjoyed it, because everything was in Czech and I had no idea what was going on... But then I explained that I have no idea whats going on in rap when its in english, sooo.... I made do.  lol. I could tell it rhymed, and the music was good :) Also, that night my guardian angel visited me in the guise of a friend I made while waiting in line for the bathroom.  Somehow my purse and I parted ways during the evening, and hours later, when I'd given up all hope, my bathroom line buddy found me on the dance floor with my purse in her hand!  that took the evening from good to fantabulous pretty quick :D

Later (or earlier... I'm not exactly sure, but I know I havn't written about it yet...) A friend of ours came to our apartment and made a traditional Czech meal for St. Martin's day.  It is when the wine from this year is first released, so it is a Czech tradition to make a big, heavy meal to go along with the delicious wine. My friend made a goose, potato dumplings, sauerkraut, red cabbage, and this amazing soup with meat dumplings in it.  It was epppicccc, and only a week before Thanksgiving!!

For the day of thanksgiving a friend of mine invited me to the Prague Marine house to join in on some traditional American festivities.  Unbeknownst to me, it was quite the intimate affair, and it was much more difficult to blend in than I had hoped.  Despite showing up knowing noone but my friend (the only other non-marine or non-marine family member) everyone was super nice and the awkwardness was fleeting :) Not to mention, the food was incredibleee and they had live football, so I was happy :D

The weekend after Thanksgiving I went to the tree lighting ceremony in the main Prague Christmas market with a bunch of friends.  It was an absolute mob scene, but it was pretty cool to see the tree all lit up.  The Christmas markets in Prague are absolutely fabulous.  There are a bunch (five? maybe more?) around town, and there are mini-versions in basically every open space in the city.  They all have Christmas trees, decorations, stalls selling the usual assortment of trinkets, and most importantly FOOD!!! There are a number of delicious sweets and pastries that are traditional Christmas market fare, then there is usually more substantial food as well.  It is all delicious, but the best part about the markets by far is the svarak, or hot wine.  Nothing is better when it is freezing and gray out than to get a piping hot cup of mulled wine.  And it really doesnt hurt that there are stalls selling it at the exit from my metro station :D

Then, a group of us went to a hockey game.  Hockey is pretty big in the Czech Republic, and the game we saw was between two of the main teams, Sparta (from Prague) and Slavia (from Brno).  It was my second game ever, and it was so much fun!! It ended up going into overtime, and Sparta won in the end!! Super epic.  Then later that evening I won two games of foosball.... against a czech guy!!! Also super epic.

Last weekend I had a Christmas get together at my apartment with a bunch of coworkers and friends.  I was a bit worried after a shaky start when my power went out after I turned the oven on, but I got the power back on and it all ended up well :)

I am now in my last week of teaching before Christmas break!! I'm going back home for a week, and I'm super excited to get some sunshine and sushi before heading back to Prague!! I still havn't seen snow here yet, but who knows? Maybe it will be waiting for me when I return...

So, knowing my blogging diligence, this may be the last post of this year.  If so, apologies, and I'll try to make my New Years recap worth the wait :D
Till next time!

Back in Prague

So, those last two recap posts got me to early November, and I know I've done a lot in that time..... lets see what I remember.

First off, I went to an Opera with some friends.  We saw Rusalka, an opera by Dvorcak, which is basically the little mermaid in operatic form.  So yes, it was epic.  I really enjoyed it, and the venue was so beautiful!! We went to the Prague State Opera and it was absolutely breathtaking.

Believe it or not, we had an amazing evening in this beautiful opera house and watched a spectacular 2 hour opera... for $8!!!! It was fantastic!!! However, being the Americans we are, none of us really dressed for the part..... Nothing I wore was ripped, and I wasn't in a Skynyrd t-shirt, but we were all wearing jeans and boots amongst women in ball gowns and stilettoes.  oh well, cant win em all.  Me and my friend drank a few flutes of champagne on the way in to up our class-factor ;)

Later that week I went to Petrin park with a friend of mine to see the leaves while they were all red and gold. It is a beautiful park, and I hadn't been there yet, so it was quite nice.  They have a cable car that will take you up the hill to the top of the park which was pretty fun :)  There is also a mini imitation eiffel tower at the top of the hill which is supposed to have fantastic views of the city, but we didnt make it that far.

A view of Petrin

The rose garden, fake Eiffel tower, and some other pretty building

After our park outing, we went to the Cafe Louvre, which has been an institution in Prague since the early 1900s.  Its super fancy pantsy, and apparently Kafka and Einstein used to frequent the place in their respective days.  Pretty cool.  They're fameous for their hot chocolate, which was delicious but sooooo rich.  It is pretty much the consistency of pudding.  It was great, but I couldn't finish mine.

More to update soon, I still ahve about 3 weeks to recap, but I have to run if im going to make it to my next class on time...