Day 2: More Praha

It's crazy how little I've slept in the last few days, as tired as I was last night I went to sleep and still woke up around 5:00 am local time here in Prague. We left our hotel at about 8:30 am to go get some breakfast before it was time to meet with Jan again. We found a spot and sat down. There is a reason why The United State is heavier than most European countries, and I found that out first hand at breakfast this morning. I don't know the name of what I ordered but it was basically a ham and cheese melt that was toasted, and it was fantastic. The problem was that it was tiny. I could have eaten at least three times what I ate. That is why Europeans are so much skinnier, they eat way smaller portions. In the US we are so concerned with how many grams of fat the meal has, and how many carbs and complex carbs, I don't see any of that over here in the short time that I have been here. It seems that, in general, Europeans don't care so much what they eat as far as health goes, but they just eat much less of it that Americans do. Also here in Europe, if you order a coke, you get a coke. Only one coke though. There is no refills, and even the drink that you get is maybe 10 ounces. In America you can order a medium coke at a fast food place and it comes out 32 ounces or something crazy, and even then if you sit in the restaurant you can get refills. Its a different world over here. After half a breakfast we went to meet Jan. Jan showed up with a big Czech smile on his face and off we went to walk around the city of Praha to the natives, but we call it Prague. The first place we went was to the Prague Castle, which is the residence of the Czech President, and yes it is called a president according to Jan. We were being guided by a local so we had a tip, you see for a long time this gorgeous Gothic style Cathedral building was open to the public, but a few years ago I guess they decided to charge to get into the building. Some religious people apparently made a stink about it because they simply wanted to go in and pray inside this beautiful church. So here we are, three Americans walking up to this guard with our Czech speaking tour guide, Jan, and he starts talking to Czech to this guy and after a minute or two, my sister and my dad and I are escorted into this building and then escorted inside the roped off area to sit in the pews where we were supposed to be praying, I guess. It was crazy that of the 500 people maybe, all of which were paying customers except us, here we were sitting in a roped off area as everybody else walked around us. Then after we left the Cathedral, we head over to the Tower. It cost 9 bucks a piece for us to go up there, and once you got up there the view was spectacular....once you got up there. We walked up 287 stairs in a spiral staircase that was maybe 8 feet in diameter, so you couldn't see more than six stairs in front of you at any given time. 287 stairs doesn't sound like a ton, but it was plenty of stairs for us Americans. It was enough stairs that about half way up I was thinking to myself that the Czech government should invest in a lift. It wasn't only us that were tired, I asked a guy that was coming down as we were walking up if we were close once and he said, "not really. you better pace yourself." Whew, we finally made it up the stairs and to my dismay there was no bed to take turns laying in when we got up there, but luckily I managed to make it up just fine. After the tower we headed out of the castle area, and found something to eat and drink as us Americans were tuckered out at this point. On our way back to our apartment we walked across the Charles Bridge which was very interesting. It was a bridge in which cars were not allowed and there were all sorts of interesting people selling stuff from drawings to dream catcher looking things. There was also a guy on the bridge who was apparently pretty famous because Jan had seen him before. This guy was playing literally at least 6 instruments and one time, and he was good too. He had 4 or 5 instruments attached to his hands and then another one each attached to his feet. Every time he tapped his feet it would make an instrument make a noise. It was very interesting and he drew quite a large crowd. From there it was time to start heading back to our apartment because we were tired and Jan had to meet his family somewhere. We took a subway back for about a mile and a half or so, and on the Subway I got to stand next to a beautiful Czech girl with long blonde hair and a great set of....I digress, anyway we were finally getting back to the area where I could kind of recognize and I knew we needed to take a left at this certain point of or journey to get back home. Us Americans were dragging from walking so much as we approached the point. When we got there Jan said, "I think we should go straight here," not because he didn't know where we were but because he wanted to take us to an island in the middle of the river, which ended up being pretty cool, but after so much walking me and my sister and my dad were ready to be back in our apartment and resting. We did finally make it back and after Jan came up to check out our place and chat for another ten minutes or so, it was time to say our goodbyes to Jan, as we are leaving the next morning for another town in the Czech Republic. As soon as Jan walked out the door you would've thought that the third atomic bomb had been dropped in our room because we all hit the pillows so fast. That is another thing about Europe is that there is so many less cars there, and everybody is always walking. Jan seemed very fresh as my family was stumbling down the stretch. Another reason why Europeans are skinnier maybe is because they walk so much. Anyway, this is getting long. I will catch up tomorrow when we reach our next destination in the Czech Republic.