Czech us out in Prague!

So I'm a little behind again. These past two weeks have been crazy. This past weekend we were in Medjugorie and last weekend we were visiting Prague. I'm going to try to catch up this week but it might be difficult because we leave again on Thursday night for another 10-day break. This time we're off to Rome and Assisi! :)

So last weekend was a two day weekend and I traveled with Andrea and Lydia to Prague in the Czech Republic. We left the Kartause at 4pm on Friday afternoon and caught the 5pm train from Keinberg to Pochlarn. On the train from Pochlarn to Vienna, we bought a train ticket using our Vorteils card which is basically a discount card for train travel in Austria. It's a good deal and it allows us to leave earlier then 7:30 since our Eurail pass is valid only from 7:30 till midnight the next day for one day of travel, so it saves us from using another precious day of our 10-day pass! ;) We got to Vienna about 7:45, checked into our hostel, dropped our stuff off and went to grab some dinner. Prague is a 4 1/2 hour train ride from Vienna but it already takes 2 1/2 hours to get from Gaming to Vienna so the best option for us was to get a hostel in Vienna and leave early in the morning from Vienna to Prague. We booked a mixed dorm (boys and girls) since it was cheaper but we were fortunate to have only girls in our room, and we had our own bathroom!

We warned our roommates we needed to get up early (they were Chinese or Korean or something and their English wasn't great), they ended up leaving the light on all night and I don't know if it was accident, whether they wanted the light on, if they thought they were being kind by leaving the light on for us, or if they just misunderstood us. I have no idea but when we got up in the early morning it was on. Luckily I was tired enough not to notice, in fact it was a bit of a surprise waking up with it on in the morning. It ended up being helpful though haha. We were up at 4:15, packed our stuff and took the metro from one main station in Vienna to another to catch our train to Prague. There we ran into another group from Franciscan, Sarah was in the group and they were also going to Prague but they avoided the hostel situation to save money except that they ended up staying outside for six hours overnight. (They were expecting to find a place to lounge in the train station but there was literally no place to go), and apparently it was a hard, cold night for them outside :/ We arrived in Prague at about 10:20 and found a Starbucks for coffee and from there headed to our hostel. Our friend Steve went to Prague at the beginning of the semester and recommended Crib 15 hostel. It was only €7.30 per night which is a fantastic price and then it was €5 for breakfast. Anyway, we get to this place and it looks pretty sketchy from the outside but it was the cutest little place on the inside. It was the best hostel we've stayed in yet for sure! We got there at 11am but couldn't check in till 3 so we left our bags in luggage storage and headed to the Old Town Square.

We found an advertisement in the hostel for a pizza restaurant that looked pretty good and said we would get 15% off if we presented the advertisement. Ha so we went on a mission to find the place. We eventually found it and it was super yummy, except the 15% off was a little bit of a hastle with the three of us trying to pay separately, but we managed ;)

After lunch, we went to Charles Bridge hitting the little shops along the way.

When we came to the bridge, it was such a beautiful view. We couldn't have been there on a better day, the sun was out and there wasn't a cloud in the sky!

From Charles Bridge, we walked up to the Prague Castle which is in the distant up on the hill in this last picture with the "Bridge Band" (entertainment for tourists walking across the bridge) ;) At the top of the hill, was a gorgeous view of Prague!

We found a little park on the top of the hill where Andrea and I rested while Lydia went and explored a little, it was such a nice little spot!

About 5:00 we started back toward Charles Bridge and stopped for Chinese buffet for dinner. After dinner, we shopped some more and officially checked into our hostel at 8. Another bonus to Crib 15 hostel in Prague besides being cheap, was we had the whole six person bedroom to ourselves. Three free beds! It was exciting for sure :)

We walked around a bit at night to see about something to do but nothing looked appealing so we headed back to the hostel and went to bed. We woke up in the morning at 8 - took showers and ate a really nice continental breakfast - bonus #3 to my favorite hostel so far ;) We left for mass at 9:20 to allow for enough time to walk to the Infant Jesus of Prague Church which was across Charles Bridge again for mass at 10am. Mass was in Czech but it was beautiful as always :)

Here is the famous Infant Jesus of Prague and the inside of the church

After mass we did a little more shopping along the streets back to the hostel. We stopped at Subway to pick up sandwhiches for dinner since we wouldn't have time picking up food on our way back to the Kartause, and we stopped at another sandwhich shop for lunch. Headed back to the hostel and were starting to be pressed for time so we began running. We ran to platform 6 which was at the very end of the station and were a bit frantic because it was clearly not the right platform. We asked someone who told us it was leaving from platform 2! So we ran back down and managed to get there in just enough time :) Then things started to get really crazy after we got to Vienna. I had my printed copy of the train itinerary before we left so everything was in front of me, however, trains are changing all the time like our platform in Prague. Well, we ran into our first really inconvenient train change... we get to our platform where we would be catching a train to another station in Vienna and then from there, catch the train back to Gaming. Well, about a minute before the train was supposed to arrive, it disappeared from the screen and replaced with some other random destination! Well we decide to take the metro since that worked for us before. To make a long story short, we end up taking a metro, a tram and a bus to this other train station and we still miss our connecting train. So we get on a different train which we find out is a "slow" train and then the slow train decides to break down before its even out of Vienna. So we're delayed for a good 45 minutes. By the time we're close to connecting stations, the last train to Gaming leaves. We're told when this happens to get off at the Sheibbs train station (which is about 15 minutes from the Kartause) and get a taxi. Well stupid us, we get off at Ybbs which we think is Sheibbs and decide we'll just hitch hike as we walk back. We get two rides that take us back to Gaming, and we discover we would have had a long night walking since we were about 30 minutes away from Gaming... driving. Thanks to God for those wonderful people who picked us up! We got back to the Kartause about 11:30pm which was pretty good for being that far out and having no idea how we were getting back. It was an adventurous weekend :)