Category: 2010-09 Berlin to Pula

Unfortunately, Sara was still feeling poorly on her birthday 🙁 

She opened her cards and presents (thanks, all!) while still tucked up in bed and we then had an early breakfast so that we could beat the crowds to Charles Bridge.  The main motivation for this was to photograph Oli’s “cool” Mission Impossible sequence! Having never seen the film, Sara was totally baffled by this whole exercise, but Oli had been talking about it since our arrival in Prague so she humoured him.  We got a few weird looks (unsurprisingly) but our mission was successful! 

We then walked towards the old town and visited the main square to see the famous astronomical clock chime at 10am.

We also climbed up the clock tower, which had a great view over Prague. 

Next, we wandered down a shopping street hoping to see the Municipal House, which was supposed to be worth a look. On the way, we stopped for a hot chocolate and sneaky slice of birthday cake in a spectacular, high-ceilinged Art Nouveau cafe.  On our way out of the building, we were wondering where the Municipal House had got to, only to look up and realise we’d been in it all along!  Classic.

Afterwards, we finally tracked down the English-language bookshop, but unfortunately had no luck with the renewable energy book. We walked down a very posh shopping street and around the Jewish quarter before crossing our fourth bridge of the city back towards the hotel. This time, we both had an afternoon nap! In the evening, we went out for a birthday dinner to the restaurant we had been so impressed with on the first day.  Unfortunately, we were seated inside this time so didn’t have the beautiful view, but it was still a lovely meal.

Sara woke with a sore throat and feeling a bit under the weather, but it was a beautiful day so we headed out for some sightseeing after a lovely buffet breakfast. We walked uphill to the enormous castle complex just in time to see the changing of the guard and a band playing – excellent timing, but it was very crowded. We bought our tickets and took ourselves on a whistle-stop tour of what the castle had to offer, including a cathedral, palaces, and a basilica. We enjoyed what we saw, but really noticed that things weren’t as well-preserved or restored as we would have expected. Before long, Sara had really had enough and needed a rest, so after sitting in the sun with all of Prague below us for a little while, we went back to the hotel for the afternoon. On the way back, we bought guilty-pleasure Subway sandwiches to cheer ourselves up! 

While Sara napped, Oli headed out on his own adventure to search for an English-language bookshop to buy a book about renewable energy to keep him occupied on our train journeys.  He realised later that he went to the wrong street, so no wonder no one seemed to know what he was talking about when he asked for Big Ben.  They must have thought he’d mistaken Prague for London!

After a good rest, we went out for dinner at a pizzeria again recommended by the Lonely Planet. The building didn’t look like much from the entrance, but the restaurant was in the cellar and the pizzas were massive and yummy.

We arrived at Bamberg station with our packed lunch raring to get on our next train only to find that it was delayed, which was a bit of a worry. It was only 15 minutes late but we had a connection to make and that was enough to make us miss it. When the train did arrive, it was another comfortable ICE train and we soon discovered from the conductor that our connection was being held at Nüremberg for us. It was a bit of a surprise to discover that we would be travelling the rest of the way to Prague by road and not by rail as we had assumed from our train tickets! Anyway, it was no problem; the coach was comfortable and we arrived at Prague Hlavni station at about 4.30pm. 

We then spent about an hour in the station trying to get currency, a map and to find our bearings. Finally we were on our way and walked to our hotel, which was no short distance with our backpacks! It was worth the walk, though. We were slightly sceptical because the hotel reviews on TripAdvisor were great, but it seemed so cheap. However, it was a very comfortable and stylish hotel and we loved it straight away (and excitedly took lots of pictures – it was way above the standard of our other accommodation so far!) 

After getting settled in, we headed out to dinner at another restaurant recommended by the Lonely Planet. On our way, we stumbled across the Charles Bridge and Oli was very excited to see lots of places that had featured in Mission Impossible. We had an excellent al fresco dinner overlooking the river and with an amazing view of Prague by night.  We ended our successful travel day with our daily dose of German MTV before heading to bed.