Prague day 1: The Markets

I thought I had nearly caught up on my posts yesterday but then fell asleep before I could write this one! So anyway, yesterday morning at 4:30am we woke up and packed our bags ready to leave the hotel at 5 for our flight at 7:20 to Prague. This flight was the most...interesting so far, Sonia got upgraded which meant we had an empty seat put between us (there aren't separate business class etc). Then behind us sat this super annoying man who breathed really, REALLY loudly, which was luckily drowned out by the even louder air con on the plane :) and also, across the aisle from us a girl got air sick... Which was lovely. Well once our 2 hour flight was over, we were driven to our hotel throughout the beautiful and frosty country of Prague. I know that in NZ we get frosts, but nothing like in Prague, everything seemed to be covered in a layer of crisp whiteness, the trees looked as if they had been sprinkled with icing sugar, it is really beautiful. And cold. -2 degrees Celsius when we arrived and by the time we hopped out of the car, it was near tropical at 0. In Prague, everything is so completely different to New Zealand and England too, all the buildings are so old and very colourful in all sorts of pinky-browns, yellow, and lots of concrete and plaster rather than bricks like in the English buildings. There are carvings on almost every building and the streets are cobblestones, which is really cool :). 

Amazing mosiac on the way to market!

The very colourful buildings

So after putting some more warm clothes on and grabbing beanies and scarfs from our bags, we headed out into the elements to find the Prague Christmas markets. Now if you look back to one of my posts about Tokyo, you will notice that Sonia and I got lost on out bikes... We may have got lost again, this time with a map. All the little streets are completely out of scale on the map and so we would walk too far and then turn down the wrong street (of which there are lots that all look very similar). In the end, somehow we ended up in the complete opposite direction to where we wanted to be and when I tried to find green street signs on sticks, there were none (in Prague it turns out that they are red, small and stuck onto walls :). After stopping in at a small christmas market along the way that we found, we bought what is called Trdelnik, a rolled out pastry thing that is wound around a pole and turned on quick rotisserie over hot coals, it is really delicious! Not too sweet and satisfies your stomach until lunch.

 After wandering around the streets some more, we finally found the Christmas market, it is so beautiful, especially when we returned when it was dark and all the christmas lights were on. Here there are all sorts of stalls with people selling magnets, woven things, lace, gingerbread, hot dog things (not like NZ hotdogs) and heaps of the Trdelnik. In the middle of the square they have a giant christmas tree, a real one that is grown there and decorated up at Christmas time, again, really really cool. 

Market with castle behind

Beautifully decorated tree!

Sonia at our indoor/outdoor lunch area

When lunchtime came, we sat down in a small outside heated area-not really that warm, and ordered our food, both traditional dishes, I had beef goulash with bread dumplings, and Sonia got beef fillet stroganoff, much redder from paprika than I have ever seen it before, and they were both delicious. For dessert I had apple strudel, not sure if its traditional but it seemed to be quite common. This was again, delicious and I forgot to take a picture before I ate it up :). The funniest thing about Prague is that whatever you eat or drink, if you are outside, the food is cold before it reaches your mouth, and so by the end of it, even my hot chocolate was only lukewarm! :) 

My traditional goulash

Sonias stroganoff

 
 Next we walked some more and found our way to Charles bridge, a very famous and popular place to be, for everyone-including beggars who kneel/lie on the ground begging for money before the police come and tell them to go away. All the way along the bridge are statues, and we found one of the 'Good King Wenceslas' from the song we sang at church, T! 
As we continued to wander around, we darted in and out of random stores, just in an effort to try and defrost our fingers and toes-and my Rudolf nose :).

At about 4, we went on a very long search for the st martins monastery in which a mini concert was being held that night. This search ended up very long because, again, the map isn't so clear on where anything actually is :) after finding this place, we stopped in at a lovely cafe/patisserie and sipped on hot chocolate and nibbled a honey, nut tart. The hot chocolate here is completely different to New Zealand, it must use real chocolate and at this particular cafe it was more like denso, thick, rich and delicious and warming. 

Prague market by night

About 3/4 of an hour later we returned to the monastery and listened to a Czechoslovakian group with a soprano, violinist, organ player and harpist play a selection of Czech and world carols, it was very nice even though I couldn't understand most of it due to the language barrier :). The acoustics in this small room were amazing and no one needed a microphone or anything to be heard. 

Our mini concert

We retuned back to our hotel-without getting lost on the way! And I started blog writing, now I have finally caught up, yay! And will post again tonight about today's events :) 
Love you all and I am missing everyone back home, hope your holidays are going well and the production was a hit!