It is crazy how fast my time went by before break. Normally at Penn, I really feel like I need a break by the time it rolls around in March. It was a weird feeling here because I didn’t feel exhausted from my school work and in need of a break (though I was certainly excited to start some more traveling and to get to see Seth!!)
Sunday: The last time that Dana and I went to Paris we had some really bad delays with the train, so I decided to take a train into Paris at 1 and hang out for a few hours in the city before my flight at 9pm. I went back to that great little creperie near St. Michel and Notre Dame. I had a delicious salad with pan seared goat cheese followed by the delicious Zanzibar crepe with raspberries and nutella – if only I could have finished it! I walked around and enjoyed the beautiful sunshine. It was a little hard because I was carrying around all my stuff, but I found some really interesting old medical textbooks in a stand on the side of the Seine and really enjoyed looking through them. After that, I headed to Charles de Gaulle airport for my flight to Vienna. It was a pretty easy flight, though it was interesting because the flight attendants didn’t really speak either French or English, only German, so that was kind of difficult. I made it to Vienna and met up with Seth in the baggage claim!!! We had arranged our flights to get in around the same time and it worked out perfectly. I was so happy to see him. We grabbed my bag and headed to try to get the train to our hotel. We figured out that it was going to be complicated and expensive to take the train, so we went over to try to get a cab. There were booths set up for cab companies and this one guy came over to take us. Seth was worried because something just seemed off. We got to his car and it just looked like a normal car, not a taxi. He tried to explain that he had a special license plate because he was a flat rate taxi and not a metered taxi, but we decided to play it safe and find another taxi. We walked back with the guy to the main part of the terminal and when we were in the elevator, the guy was holding his keys and Seth mistakenly thought he was holding a knife. So he very sternly asked the guy to put his knife away. Let’s just say it was super awkward because it was just the guy’s car keys. After that, we found a traditional taxi (meanwhile we realized that the guy was actually right about the license plate thing, but better safe than sorry) and headed back to our hotel. We stayed a Best Western Hotel Harmonie and were so exhausted and just super excited to make it back to the hotel.
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| View of Vienna |
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| St. Stephan's Cathedral |
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| St. Stephan's Cathedral |
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| Ice Skating trails |
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| View of Vienna |
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| Hofburg Palace |
Monday: Monday morning we woke up bright and early to get our day of sightseeing started. We began with the incredible St. Stephan’s Cathedral. The gothic architecture was just incredible and we really enjoyed the detailed audio guided tour of the nave of the cathedral. After that we took a really interesting tour of the catacombs under the church. We saw where many famous people were buried including pieces of some of the Hapsburgs. In the past, they stored the body of important people in one church, the head in another and the organs in a third. St. Stephan’s Catacombs are where they stored the organs. They have big containers that once contained the organs. While most of them have now disintegrated because they were not sealed perfectly, only last year one of the vats began to leak and had to be resealed (meaning that organs were still likely preserved inside!!). Next we headed further down into the catacombs where there were mass burial sites. There were so many people buried down there that when they ran out of room they would take out all the bones of all the people who had been buried there and restack them very tightly to create more space. There were essentially solid walls made out of bones. After our tour of the catacombs, we climbed up the south tower of the church to see an incredible view of Vienna below us.
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| Outside the Hofburg Palace |
After that, we headed to Karntnerstrasse (the shopping district) and wandered around the street. By that point, we were pretty hungry and decided to find somewhere to eat. Deciding to be adventurous and frugal, we headed into a little side street and found a great little Austrian restaurant. Given that we went to a place off the beaten track, our waitress didn’t speak English very well. We figured the easiest thing would be to order some weinerschnitzel. It was my first time ever eating veal and it was absolutely delicious!! Following our lovely lunch, we headed to our guided tour of the Sisi Museum at the Kaiserappartements of the Hofburg Palace. This was the residence of the royal Hapsburg family for over 600 years. We had a really interesting tour guide and learned a ton about Empress Elisabeth – I really didn’t remember much about the Hapsburgs from World History so it was really fascinating. After that, we headed downstairs to see the royal silver collection. It was simply unbelievable. Room after room of incredible pieces. It was almost too much to really take in. Following that, Seth had his heart set on seeing Peter Pan in German at the Burg theater. For me, the building itself was the most exciting part of this. We ended up buying standing room tickets for 2 euros. I was pretty tired and unfortunately did not remember much of the story of Peter Pan, so I was pretty lost. Seth, however, was following along and really enjoyed it. I compromised and took a little nap. Finally, Seth was ready to go and we headed over to a great café right near the theater. I had a nice tea and we shared a great streudel as a snack. Outside of the theater, I had seen an ice rink and I was pretty excited to go skating, so we headed over there. Now, this was not an ordinary ice rink. I was two large ice rinks connected by pathways/trails. Despite the ice skates being super painful, we had a fantastic time. The scenery of one of the lit up parliament buildings in the background made for a really lovely evening. At this point, we were pretty hungry and it had gotten pretty late. We decided to head out and start looking for somewhere to eat. We ended up asking a random guy at a metro stop and he actually gave us some pretty good advice. We went to Leupold Restaurant, which is right next to Kupferdachl restaurant (which is apparently really old and famous, but was not open/serving food that night). We had a delicious dinner of broiled beef, spaetzle, potatoes and salad, followed by this amazing ice cream ball filled with apricot puree covered in hazelnut crumbs. We were pretty tired and decided to call it a night.
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| Votive Church |
Tuesday: We had walked past this amazing gothic looking church many times on our way to and from our hotel and I decided we had to go check it out. I later found out that it is called the Votive Church. It was just as beautiful inside as I imagined. So crazy how easily we could have missed such amazing things! Next we headed over to the Spanish Riding School in the Hofburg Palace. We were really excited about watching the horses’ morning exercise and Seth said that he had even seen online that the horses did tricks where they walked around on two legs! Unfortunately, this was really more warm-ups and so not quite that exciting. But it was really something just to see essentially a horse barn in this unbelievably beautiful building. I guess in a Palace, there are standards – even in the barn!
Next we headed over to the Albertina. We saw some really great impressionist and early 20th century art exhibits. After that we grabbed a quick lunch before heading over to see the north tower of St. Stephan’s Church. We took the elevator up this smaller tower (there were no stairs). We got up top and in this one, unlike the south tower, we were really outside only supported by some fencing. I was totally freaking out, but it was totally worth it to see the beautiful views of Vienna, and particularly the beautiful tiling on the sides of the roof of the church! We also got to see the impressive 42,000 pound bell hanging at the top of the tower.
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| In front of St. Stephan's Cathedral |
After that, it was time to head back to our hotel, grab our stuff and head to take our bus to Prague. We booked it with this really cheaply priced Czech company called Student Agency. The big yellow bus showed up and we got in. It was really comfortable and there was even a bus attendant who served us drinks, handed out magazines and newspapers (in Czech) and even showed a video on the bus (dubbed in Czech… super amusing!) We stopped about halfway through the trip in a the second biggest city in the Czech Republic – Brno. We had no Czech crowns and there was not a bank or ATM in sight, but Seth was starving and wanted to grab some food since we had a little break before the bus left again. We ended up finding a little random fast food place that was selling noodles for 20 crowns (1 dollar) and after a lot of confusion, we convinced them to take 1 euro for it. We got back on the bus and easily made it back to our hotel in Prague – Best Western Meteor Plaza, whose building actually dates from the 14th century!
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| St. Vitus' Cathedral |
Wednesday: We headed out in the morning to the Prague Castle, which was pretty fantastic. We saw the incredible St. Vitus’s Cathedral that was built by Charles IV in the 13
th century on the same site that two previous churches had been built in 1070 and before that in 920 to pay respect to St. Wenceslas (Prague patron saint), grandson of St. Ludmilla, patron saint of the Czech Republic. After that we explored an exhibit on the history of the Prague castle, saw St. George’s Basilica, and art exhibition, an exhibit in the powder tower on the history of the Prague Castle guards and had a delicious lunch of corn soup, beef goulash and cheesecake in the Lebkovicz palace café overlooking the rest of Prague. After lunch we went and explored the golden lane with a reconstructed little village and little shops before leaving the Prague Castle. It was truly breathtaking and we really enjoyed our time there.
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| Prague Castle - St. Vitus' |
After that, we headed back down the hill to the Charles Bridge. We stopped off at this little place that was cooking these little pastries outside and the smell was just such good advertising that we had to stop and get one! They are called staromestsky trdelnik and are sooo delicious! We headed over the famous Charles Bridge. It was a gorgeous day and the views of Prague and the Vltava were really beautiful! We stopped and listened to this adorable group of Czech men playing music on the bridge.
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| Prague Castle - St. Vitus' |
After that, we headed over to the Old Town Square to hear the Astronomical Clock’s display that occurs every hour. The bells ring and there are little figures that move. At the end there is a trumpeter at the top that plays a little. Let’s just say that I think this was one of Seth’s favorite things in Prague. Following that, we grabbed a little coffee in a café in the Old Town Square before heading over to our beer tour.
We found a great little company that runs beer tours each night. We went to three different microbreweries on our tour. The first one, Prazsky Most, is the newest microbrewery in Prague. We each had both a light and dark beer there to try. I was super impressed with the british people on our trip who downed both of the beers, lets just say that I was not able to keep up with them. Next we headed to the second place, Oldgoff, the oldest microbrewery in Prague which boasts and impressive 600 seats. We tried a really great ale there that I really enjoyed and learned a little bit more about the beer making process. After that, we headed to our final place, where we once again tried a light and dark beer. I was surprised that I liked the dark beer even better than the light one here. We got beer diplomas here. Overall, our tour guide was awesome, the other couples on the tour were really nice and we had a great time venturing into so cool places we probably never would have discovered.
After that, we had dinner at a restaurant called U Dvou Sester. It was probably the most authentic place we ate at during our whole trip and I really enjoyed it. We had a delicious beef dish in this incredible sauce (I still wish I could figure out what the flavor was) with traditional Czech bread dumplings, potatoes, and cabbage. We really loved the atmosphere of the place as well as the amazing food.
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| Cemetery |
Thursday: Thursday we started our day by climbing the powder tower right near our hotel. The powder gate dates back to the 11
th century where the original gate was one of the 13 entrances to Prague’s old town. It was originally called the new tower, but in the 17
th century the name changed to the powder gate because it was used to store gunpowder. Inside the tower we saw some interesting exhibits and had a great view of Prague from the top of the tower. Next we headed to the Jewish quarter of Prague. This area dates back to the 13
th century, when the Jewish community in Prague was ordered to vacate their disparate homes and settle in one area. The buildings here form the best preserved complex of Jewish historical monuments in all of Europe. We began by heading through the exhibits on Jewish Customs and Traditions in the Ceremonial Hall and the Klausen Synagogue. After that, we headed over to the Old-New Synagogue. As we were sitting there taking in the place, this old adorable walked in saying that she was there to share her knowledge and that we should ask her any questions we had. The couple sitting next to her began asking her some questions about Judaism. After a bit, she decided to take us, and that other couple on a tour of the synagogue. She explained the meanings and the intricate details of everything in the synagogue. She was originally from Prague and had lived there up until she had been deported during the Holocaust, incredibly (and unlike most Jews from Prague) she and her husband survived the Holocaust and returned back to Prague. It was incredible to see her joy and her appetite for life. The excitement in her eyes when she explained that there were 52 children in her Jewish community in Prague and the hope for the future that she expressed was incredible. She spent a long time with us explaining everything and we really appreciated it. At the end she embraced us and it was a really meaningful moment.
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| Spanish Synagogue |
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| Backwards c |
Next, we went to see a really interesting exhibit on art from children in the Terezin ghetto (which is where basically all the Jews from Prague were sent before being sent on to other ghettos or concentration camps). Next we went into the Jewish cemetery. It was really interesting because all the headstones were pushed really close together – still unsure if that was done at the time that people were buried or after the fact. After that, we decided to go get lunch and wanted to eat at a Jewish restaurant. We found this great place called Dinitz owned by an Israeli. We had some delicious hummus – I was so excited to have good Israeli hummus!!! After lunch we headed back to explore the Maisel Synagogue where all the names were listed from all of those who had perished in the Holocaust. Next, the old woman had told us about this really interesting clock with Hebrew letters that runs backwards in the old town hall. We tried to get inside but the guard said it wasn’t for tourists. Seth, being a wiseguy, decided to say “what about Jewish tourists?” Somehow this actually worked. After about 10 minutes of intense questioning about every detail of our lives, he radioed someone and let us in. Unfortunately the synagogue inside was closed, but we got some bisli from the kosher shop inside before leaving. After we left, we found out that the clock was actually on the outside of the building on went to check it out, which was pretty cool. Next, We headed to see the Spanish Synagogue. We were really impressed with the incredible décor inside the Synagogue and I snuck a quick picture even though we weren’t supposed to.
After that, we headed over to Kampa where we saw the Lock bridge (we left a heart with J&S in it and Seth’s 2011 graduation charm since we didn’t have a lock with us) and the Lenin wall. After that, we found this great little café next to the lock bridge that had sheepskin rugs basically over the back of each chair. It was super cozy and we had the most incredible apple streudel there. Also, the waiter was super friendly and was really excited that I was from “seetl” and kept talking about the grunge music there and some movie we had never heard of.
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| Vltava |
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| Vlava |
After that, we headed back to the hotel to get freshened up a bit, then headed out for our dinner cruise on the Vltava. The food didn’t live up to some of the other places we had been to, but I really enjoyed the scenery and being on the river at night. It was also really interesting as we had to go through some locks at some point during the river.
Friday: We decided to start the day by climbing the Petrin tower. We took the metro over and then had to take a funicular up the hill. Seth had never heard the word funicular before and everytime we had to ask someone for directions he would go up and say “we are looking for the…” and then he would stop and have me fill in the work funicular. Just couldn’t figure that one out…. We were lucky and it was a beautiful day with really clear blue skies. All the other towers we had climbed up were stone staircases within the center of the building. This one had the staircase wrapping around the building surrounded by a little fence to keep us safe. I was pretty scared going up and the strong winds didn’t help, but it was definitely worth it in the end because the views from the top were breathtaking and it was great to overlook all of Prague and to see all the sites that we had seen from a bird’s eye perspective.
Next we headed to Wenceslas square to the National Museum. They had a really interesting exhibit on all the important contributions that people from the Czech Republic have had on all different disciplines, including the director of WHO who helped to eradicate smallpox. I really enjoyed this part of the exhibit and Seth loved the part where we got to play with magnets… Next we headed to a noodle house for lunch.
After that, we tried to go on a tour of the Municipal House, but it was sold out, so we headed over to the Old Town square and saw St. Nicholas’ Church. This is a gorgeous baroque style church completed in 1735 which replaced a church dating back to 1273. This church was passed through many hands. After its origins, it became a Russian Orthodox church, then the Czech army was stationed here during WWII, and now it is in the hands of the Czech Hussite Movement. Next we went to explored Tyn’s Church. The beautiful gothic church on the other side of the square, which was unfortunately closed. However, we were able to see in through some windows and it was very pretty inside.
Ever since we got to Prague we had been hearing about this czech version of coke and pepsi called kofola. We had been trying to find it everywhere and finally decided to go on a search for it. We finally found it and it was really interesting. It tasted kind of like a licorice necco wafer, but I surprisingly enjoyed it. After that, we walked around some other areas of Prague, exploring the New town hall, St. Ludmilla’s Church and the Dancing House (also called Fred and Ginger referring to Ginger Rogers and Fred Astair - deconstructivist architecture). We also saw the Jerusalem Synagogue, which was unfortunately closed for a few months, but the outside was stunning! We also saw this incredible church that we didn’t know the name of. The receptionist at the front desk of our hotel made a box on our map and told us to go visit that church but never gave us a name. Nevertheless, it was a really gorgeous church. I had a lovely time walking around and exploring, but Seth was a little tired (and just a bit cranky), so we decided to sit down in a café and have a little coffee and tea. Next we headed back to the central area of Prague and had dinner at the oldest microbrewery in Prague – Oldgoff – that we had visited on our beer tour. We had a nice fish dish there and tried a different beer there.
Next, we were planning on taking the metro to the airport since we had become pretty familiar with it, but the hotel receptionist informed us that it would take a lot longer than we had planned, so we ended up taking a cab. Once we got there and went to check in with easyjet was when the ridiciulousness commenced. Let’s just say that easyjet is the worst airline that I have ever taken. Flying from Paris and Zurich to Vienna we both took a budget airline called Niki and it was quite enjoyable, but easyjet was certainly not. We were checking in and they were so awful about everything. We almost ended up having to pay $96 extra dollars for our luggage that would have normally caused no problems. Luckily we got it reduced to $35 and just had to deal with it. They were so incredibly stingy with the one piece of luggage that you are allowed to bring on board that pretty much everyone had to check their bag and fork up the fees. Once on board. The only thing complimentary was water. Everything else was for a fee. In the air at one point, it sounded like the engines cut out and Seth had a mini heart attack. I honestly can’t remember all the ridiculous things they did (there were just too many), but we certainly were joking about it for a while after that. Once we got to London Gatwick, we luckily avoided the gigantic customs line for EU citizens and went through the short line for non-EU citizens. However, trying to get to our airport hotel was so complicated by public transportation at night, given that I was exhausted and almost ready to cry that we ended up having to take a cab. Let’s just say I was pretty happy to make it to the hotel and to crash.
Sunday: We had to wake up at 4:30am to be out of our room by 5:00am. Luckily we had packed up most of our stuff the night before, but we were still pretty tired. We took the bus back to the airport and checked in to our flights. We grabbed breakfast in a little shop in the airport and waited for my flights (since seth’s was about 45 minutes after mine). It was really sad to see the incredible trip come to an end and to say goodbye to Seth, but I’m just so happy to have had such an amazing experience and to have had to opportunity to share it with Seth!!
Sunday: The last time that Dana and I went to Paris we had some really bad delays with the train, so I decided to take a train into Paris at 1 and hang out for a few hours in the city before my flight at 9pm. I went back to that great little creperie near St. Michel and Notre Dame. I had a delicious salad with pan seared goat cheese followed by the delicious Zanzibar crepe with raspberries and nutella – if only I could have finished it! I walked around and enjoyed the beautiful sunshine. It was a little hard because I was carrying around all my stuff, but I found some really interesting old medical textbooks in a stand on the side of the Seine and really enjoyed looking through them. After that, I headed to Charles de Gaulle airport for my flight to Vienna. It was a pretty easy flight, though it was interesting because the flight attendants didn’t really speak either French or English, only German, so that was kind of difficult. I made it to Vienna and met up with Seth in the baggage claim!!! We had arranged our flights to get in around the same time and it worked out perfectly. I was so happy to see him. We grabbed my bag and headed to try to get the train to our hotel. We figured out that it was going to be complicated and expensive to take the train, so we went over to try to get a cab. There were booths set up for cab companies and this one guy came over to take us. Seth was worried because something just seemed off. We got to his car and it just looked like a normal car, not a taxi. He tried to explain that he had a special license plate because he was a flat rate taxi and not a metered taxi, but we decided to play it safe and find another taxi. We walked back with the guy to the main part of the terminal and when we were in the elevator, the guy was holding his keys and Seth mistakenly thought he was holding a knife. So he very sternly asked the guy to put his knife away. Let’s just say it was super awkward because it was just the guy’s car keys. After that, we found a traditional taxi (meanwhile we realized that the guy was actually right about the license plate thing, but better safe than sorry) and headed back to our hotel. We stayed a Best Western Hotel Harmonie and were so exhausted and just super excited to make it back to the hotel. 
Tuesday: We had walked past this amazing gothic looking church many times on our way to and from our hotel and I decided we had to go check it out. I later found out that it is called the Votive Church. It was just as beautiful inside as I imagined. So crazy how easily we could have missed such amazing things! Next we headed over to the Spanish Riding School in the Hofburg Palace. We were really excited about watching the horses’ morning exercise and Seth said that he had even seen online that the horses did tricks where they walked around on two legs! Unfortunately, this was really more warm-ups and so not quite that exciting. But it was really something just to see essentially a horse barn in this unbelievably beautiful building. I guess in a Palace, there are standards – even in the barn! 
Wednesday: We headed out in the morning to the Prague Castle, which was pretty fantastic. We saw the incredible St. Vitus’s Cathedral that was built by Charles IV in the 13th century on the same site that two previous churches had been built in 1070 and before that in 920 to pay respect to St. Wenceslas (Prague patron saint), grandson of St. Ludmilla, patron saint of the Czech Republic. After that we explored an exhibit on the history of the Prague castle, saw St. George’s Basilica, and art exhibition, an exhibit in the powder tower on the history of the Prague Castle guards and had a delicious lunch of corn soup, beef goulash and cheesecake in the Lebkovicz palace café overlooking the rest of Prague. After lunch we went and explored the golden lane with a reconstructed little village and little shops before leaving the Prague Castle. It was truly breathtaking and we really enjoyed our time there.
We found a great little company that runs beer tours each night. We went to three different microbreweries on our tour. The first one, Prazsky Most, is the newest microbrewery in Prague. We each had both a light and dark beer there to try. I was super impressed with the british people on our trip who downed both of the beers, lets just say that I was not able to keep up with them. Next we headed to the second place, Oldgoff, the oldest microbrewery in Prague which boasts and impressive 600 seats. We tried a really great ale there that I really enjoyed and learned a little bit more about the beer making process. After that, we headed to our final place, where we once again tried a light and dark beer. I was surprised that I liked the dark beer even better than the light one here. We got beer diplomas here. Overall, our tour guide was awesome, the other couples on the tour were really nice and we had a great time venturing into so cool places we probably never would have discovered.
After that, we headed over to Kampa where we saw the Lock bridge (we left a heart with J&S in it and Seth’s 2011 graduation charm since we didn’t have a lock with us) and the Lenin wall. After that, we found this great little café next to the lock bridge that had sheepskin rugs basically over the back of each chair. It was super cozy and we had the most incredible apple streudel there. Also, the waiter was super friendly and was really excited that I was from “seetl” and kept talking about the grunge music there and some movie we had never heard of.
Friday: We decided to start the day by climbing the Petrin tower. We took the metro over and then had to take a funicular up the hill. Seth had never heard the word funicular before and everytime we had to ask someone for directions he would go up and say “we are looking for the…” and then he would stop and have me fill in the work funicular. Just couldn’t figure that one out…. We were lucky and it was a beautiful day with really clear blue skies. All the other towers we had climbed up were stone staircases within the center of the building. This one had the staircase wrapping around the building surrounded by a little fence to keep us safe. I was pretty scared going up and the strong winds didn’t help, but it was definitely worth it in the end because the views from the top were breathtaking and it was great to overlook all of Prague and to see all the sites that we had seen from a bird’s eye perspective.
Next we headed to Wenceslas square to the National Museum. They had a really interesting exhibit on all the important contributions that people from the Czech Republic have had on all different disciplines, including the director of WHO who helped to eradicate smallpox. I really enjoyed this part of the exhibit and Seth loved the part where we got to play with magnets… Next we headed to a noodle house for lunch.
Saturday: We woke up took a bus to the airport (much easier to figure out in the light of day) to take a train into London. We got off and took the metro to Leicester square (the theater district) to try to get tickets for a show for the evening. We waited in the TKTS line just too find out that those tickets were the good seats that were for good prices, but still too expensive for us. We headed over to the theaters themselves and found some box seats for student prices for Jersey Boys!
Next we headed over to green park and Buckingham palace. We got there right at the end of the changing of the guards, so all we really saw were mobs of people. I guess I’ll have to go back when I head back to London. Next we grabbed some fish and chips at a little wine bar and I discovered that I actually like peas (revelation because I have thought that that I hated them since as long as I can remember). We saw (just the outside) of Westminster Abbey and then booked a tour of the House of Parliament. Next we grabbed another little bite to eat since lunch was pretty small and waited for our tour.
The tour of the House of Parliament was really interesting. I really knew nothing about the way that the British government worked, so it was really great to learn so much about it and to be able to see the gorgeous room of the House of Lords. It was also really cool because our tour guide was in a wheelchair – something I had never seen before. He was a really funny guide and extremely informative. After that we walked over to Trafalagar square and watched this incredible street performance where this guy managed to get his entire body through a tennis racquet by dislocating his shoulder – very gruesome, but pretty unbelievable to watch! Next we wandered through the Jubilee market and Convent garden where we saw this amazing string quartet playing. They were so lively and entertaining and really enjoyable to watch.
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