Prague: It's like little America, except they don't speak English

I am fresh off of 12 days of nonstop traveling throughout Europe. My 12 day European tour consisted of the following places: Prague, Brussels, Antwerp, Brugges, Dunkerque, Dinard and Mont St. Michel.  Not to worry, I will be blogging about each one of these places, which means that you all will have some excellent blog posts to read in the upcoming week!

Let's start with Prague, which was definitely a trip highlight.  My friend Emily and I landed in Prague on Saturday morning (the 12th), where we promptly figured out the metro and bus so that we could get to the place where we were staying. We started out our trip by taking a free tour of the city with the Sandman's New Europe company (they are a pretty awesome company, I'd definitely recommend them!) The tour we took gave us a good feel for the city, plus some history, and allowed us to figure out just exactly what we needed/wanted to see during our trip. There was one downfall to the tour, however: IT WAS FREEZING!!! I think that day in Praha as the locals say, it was -17 degrees Celsius, and the mountains had hit -42 degrees Celsius that night. Emily and I learned to layer our clothes very well so that we wouldn't freeze to death. A typical outfit for a Prague day consisted of the following:
-Tights
-Leggings
-2 pairs of socks
-Jeans
-leg warmers
-Ugg boots
-shirt
-long, thick sweater that goes all the way to my knees
-Fleece jacket
-Trench coat on top of all that
-hat
-gloves
-scarf (which I left in Montlucon- sad day)

If you look at some of my pictures and wonder why I look like a puffed up marshmallow, now you know just how much I was wearing.

Ok, enough about the cold....I bet you are eagerly awaiting some pictures of the city.  I promise that I will not disappoint you!

Here is the Astronomical Clock that is located in the Old Town Square of the city:

The explanation of the clock is pretty cool, but you're going to have to go to Prague to hear about it! :)

The Municipal House is quite a gorgeous building that served as the seat of the kings of Prague (aka Bohemia) from the beginning of the 14th century till about 1483.

During the day

At night...I prefer the nighttime picture

The National Gallery during the day:

 And at night

Prague Castle 

in front of Prague Castle

If I was writing a book, I'd need to devote a whole chapter to my 5 days in Prague; that is just how much we saw and did in our short time there. One of the trip highlights was the Beer Tour that we did on our last night, which happened to be Valentine's Day (best VDay to date, as a matter of fact).  The Czech's pride themselves on their beer, and they are equally as proud that they consume the most beer per capita in the entire WORLD.  That's right folks, the most beer drank per capita happens in the Czech Republic.  On our beer tour we learned about Czech beer, and we even got to taste a little bit of it as well:

Stop 1: We got to sample different flavors of beer. This place has over 30 different flavors!

Stop 2: Drinking the REAL Budweiser 

Budweiser is Czech in origin.  The American Budweiser was started by a Czech beer maker and has evolved into the American brand we know today.  The true Czech budweiser is different in taste.

Our trip was a lot of fun, and I definitely learned a lot of historical information that I did not know before.  Everyone believes that because Prague is in Eastern Europe there is a fascinating, drastically different culture that exists there.  I found that it was not the culture that was vastly different.  Indeed, the language was pretty intimidating and overwhelming, but you'd be surprised at just how modern Prague really is.  I mean, we found a TGIFriday's there for goodness sake! What is vastly different however, is their history and how they came to be the Czech Republic. If anyone has been thinking about visiting Prague, I'd say do it.  You will find an incredibly enchanting city, rich with history that has shaped it's national identity to this very day.  One piece of advice I will leave you with about Prague: plan your trip during the warmer months; you will be much happier walking around in shorts and t-shirts than 15 different layers.