Czechin' out Czech Republic

My current stop on the travel route has been the Czech Republic. My first place that I headed was to this little town called Cesky Krumluv. It is really small, only about 14,000 people live there and the whole thing is a Unesco World Heritage site so that means that the entire town is protected. I got there and after having a bit of trouble finding my hostel, finally found it. Since I only had one night, I headed out almost immediately to begin my exploring. First stop was the castle. Since it is the off season, the inside of it is no longer open for tours, but all of the grounds are open for everyone to walk around for free, and free is ALWAYS good! So I walked around the grounds and looked out at the town sitting below it. It is situated high up on a hill as most of the castles are here and overlooks the entire small town. The town is situated among an old river that snakes through the town in the shape of an S. From the castle there is a great view of the river, the old town square, and the huge church. I headed next to look at the town church and then walked around in the old town around the town square. They were setting up a small Christmas market in the square and had a bunch of dercorations up which made it super cute. The town has a lot of old looking buildings that are different colors and shapes and they look straight out of the 1600's.

I then headed to Prague the next day where I met up with my roomie Tina, her mom, and her grandma. Our first full day inPrague, we headed out to the old town square there where the huge astronomical clock towers above dominating the view. At each hour, the clock chimes and the 12 apostles wave at onlookers down below from 2 windows that open up. There is also an old town hall and it looked like a cathedral maybe. Close to this area was the old Jewish Quarter of Josephev. In this quarter there are a few old synagogues and the old Jewish Cemetary. We decided to go to the old synagogue and the Old Jewish cemetary. The synagogue had the names of 80,000 jews from Czech who died in the Holocaust written on the walls of the synagogue and they took up tons of room. It was very interesting to see them all printed out and to think of how much room all the names from people who died in the Holocaust would take up. There was also a display there of some creative art that they did with the kids in the ghettos and concentration camps, kinda like early art therapy. The cemetary was right outside of this synagogue and was really eary looking. It was the only place for Jews to be buried for a long time so there are litterally graves upon graves upon graves. The cemetary is a small plateau with all of the headstones leaning in various directions because of the way it has become over the years. After this, we began getting snowed on and it snowed on and off all afternoon, at times hard and at times soft, so we decided to do some shopping. That took up a good chunk of the afternoon.

The next day, we headed up to Prague Castle, perched up on a hill overlooking the city. It was a beautiful view of the city from up top. You could see everything! We went inside to see the Old Royal Chambers while we were there. There was also this amazing cathedral that had numerous stained glass windows that were just amazing works of art. There were so many vibrant colors dipicting different scenes on them. There was also a bascilica we went to that was very old and we still have yet to figure out what exactly is the difference between a bascilica and a cathedral. Finally, we strolled through the Golden Lane there. That is the name of this old section inside of the castle that has a bunch of old little houses that have been converted into shops. The houses are so cute though that they look like a picture book or story book house all up and down the lane! We decided that everyone must have been short because we had to duck to get in all the doorways and we are not that tall! After that, we did a bit more browsing around town, looked at the little Christmas market, and called it an early night.

The weather here in Czech has been COLD!!!! We were all bundled up and the wind has been going too some so it makes it really chilly. It doesn't help when you are by a river either cause that makes it all the chillier!