Pra-hahahahaha

Hi rabid readers!

We seem to be a little bit behind once again so I guess it's catch up time! When we left you we were boarding the couchette. Exciting times for all involved. Basically, us. And other people, who quite probably found it substantially less exciting than we did. The staff, for instance. We had a lovely encounter with one man who came into our room when we were fast asleep and shouted "COFFEE TEA COFFEE TEA COFFEE TEA" in quite an aggressive fashion at Lucy. I was out of harm's way on the top bunk, so got away unscathed. I could hear Lucy's whimpers from below as she answered "both" with some confusion. It was great. After eating our DELICIOUS breakfast (and a confusing moment when Lucy tried to ask the man for more jam despite not knowing the word for jam...) and deciding that travelling by couchette was kind of like being at a sleep-over, we arrived in Wien. It was really really cool, possibly our favourite city so far. The tram from West Station to South Station was a highlight, as was our 10 minute wait on the train platform. We are, as you can see, a veritable mine of information about Wien tourist sites.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, we got on our train to Praha and arrived that evening. We were somewhat exhausted (as we seemed to be for our entire time in Prague) and wandered around aimlessly, ending up in a somewhat surreal and slightly awful mall. We then attempted to find the Petrin Mirror Maze, the most hilarious-sounding of the sites listed in our Prague Card guide book. Basically, what we ended up doing instead was walking directly past the entrance and then striding through the pitch-black gardens at quite a pace, clutching onto each other and constantly glancing around for predators. We happened upon Prague Castle, which was surprising (but in a good way, obviously). It was really gorgeous lit up.

The next morning, we started early at the Nash Muse which is full of stuffed animals including an enormous mammoth and a series of rooms filled with minerals, some of which had to be kept in the dark so their cases had flaps to be carefully replaced after viewing. My personal fave part was the archaelogical section where they had evidence of earliest human civilisation. It seemed that they had various items of identical looking earthenware labelled things like "children's toys" and "evidence of cult". However, the best part of the morning was when Lucy pointed to a series of giant shells and said "are those elephant legs?". (Hi. This is Lucy. In my (not very strong) defence, they looked vaguely like they might have been kind of elephanty leg looking... a bit)

Then we headed back to Prague Castle. We wandered around there for a while, seeing the numerous attractions WITHIN the castle (Golden Lane, Cathedral, Old Prague Castle, ....) We witnessed the site of The Great Defenestration of 1617 (the window was closed, presumably to avoid a reoccurance), went to Golden Lane (where you have to pay to get in, despite the fact that it is made up purely of gift shops) and visited the cathedral, convent and basilica.



We walked over Charles' Bridge (see photo of me sympathising with the tortured souls), viewing the various towers and climbing St Nicholas' Bell Tower for a panoramic view of the city. We went back up to the Petrin Mirror Maze, successfully finding it this time due to the fact that it was still light. Although the actual maze left something to be desired (it was more of just a twisting corridor lined with mirrors, the room with crazy mirrors gave us 30 of the most hilarious minutes of our lives. Oh my god those mirrors were so ridiculously funny. I can honestly now die happy.

The next day we headed out to some random modern art museum we found in our Prague book called Veletrzni Palace. It turned out to be extremely extensive and fascinating. We had a great time on the top floor, which was modern Czech sculpture, and mostly consisted of things like a toaster placed on a chair. I have to say this experience fuelled my hatred of artworks called 'untitled'. I mean, why? Why is it untitled? I need some sort of explanation as to why this toaster is art, please.

Next we headed to, in Lucy's words, 'the only attraction in the Prague Book which seemed to compete with the PMMs for the LOLs' - the chocolate museum. The description called to us: 'we heartily invite you to the good-temper factory' - whatever the hell that means. I suppose our expectations of the place could only lead to disappointment. Unfortunately, I think anyone, with any sort of expectation, even no expectation at all, would have been disappointed with this place. If you even expected just one measly square of chocolate, you would have been disappointed. The only taste we got was licked off the end of paintbrushes. I kid you not. OK, Lucy didn't lick the paintbrush, but I did. Basically there was a room where you got to paint with chocolate, which I have to say was pretty cool and pretty fun, even if the 'paint' was a little congealed. However, the remainder of the museum consisted of a single room filled with the 'artworks' of the genius who came up with the idea of painting with chocolate (in my opinion, it's a bit of a waste of chocolate, but never mind). There was also a 'history of chocolate', which told us merely how chocolate was made and included, for some mysterious reason, a display case which contained two rabbits and a single cabbage. At the end we asked for our free chocolate sample, and the lady gave us a cocoa bean. Guys, trust me, these are not nice. It left a taste in my mouth more bitter than the disappointment. Unfortunately, me being the brave sampler, I told Lucy that it was 'not too bad' just before it turned disgusting and I wanted to die. Never mind.


Anyway, for this and various other reasons we left Prague the next morning with fond memories, a permanent source of LOLs and a (slightly skewed) view that the Czech people are a bit wacky. Sorry Maria.


Signing out, Franny and Lucy