Hi everyone! Krista here, on the travelling bus our Italian bus driver Paolo has named “Chicco”. We are travelling through the Austrian Alps after the last three days exploring Prague, Czech Republic and Salzburg, Austria.
Arriving in Prague was truly breathtaking. We took in the views overlooking the city at the Prague Castle and St. Vitus cathedral. The Old Town of Prague is literally a snapshot in time with the building architecture not changing from centuries ago. The spears on top of the cathedrals and the narrow alleys were perfect to get lost in. A group of us took a stroll from our hotel across the river to take in the views of the Castle from below. St. Charles Bridge is one of the most visited places in Prague and it definitely showed. The bridge was packed with people taking selfies and enjoying the buskers playing different instruments along the bridge. After crossing the bridge we made our way to the John Lennon Wall. This wall was named after John Lennon when a man creating street art on this wall after John Lennon was killed. Since then this wall has been an outlet for people to share words and art work expressing messages of peace, and freedom, two things that John Lennon spoke for in his music, most notably, the song “Imagine”. They say that if you visit the wall in the morning, it will not look the same if you go back to visit the wall again the next day. Our second day began with a bike tour of Prague. At first I thought that I would be so focused on riding my bike and not falling that I would not be able to appreciate the neighbourhoods we were riding through. Surprisingly I did very extremely well and did not fall. It was really cool to explore a city by bike, but boy did I have a wedgey from riding on the cobblestone streets.
For a snack we visited a couple food shacks in the Old Town square and enjoyed “Langos”. Langos is fried bread brushed in garlic and covered in cheese. Basically it was garlic bread but wayyyy better!
In the evening we enjoyed a traditional Czech dinner with local beer. Apparently, the Czech have the highest incidence of heart attack and intestinal cancer; I can see why – there is tons of meat with every meal. We enjoyed the entertainment of traditional Czech dances and songs and not so traditionally I was whisked around like a rag doll by our Italian driver Paolo (who was previously a professional ballroom dancer) as he twirled me around. After a couple shots of jager and beer, boy was I dizzy.
After dinner we all checked out one of the clubs in the Old Town. Considering it was a Sunday and there were 40 of us, we populated the entire club. It was such a great time to drink and dance with everyone and know that we would all be sleeping soundly on the bus next morning after returning to our hotel well into the wee hours of the morning.
The next morning we began our journey to Salzburg, Austria. This town has made its money from salt. It was also made famous because it is the birth place of Mozart and The Sound of Music. Salzburg was quaint. It was lovely to smell the fresh air and be surrounded by the Austrian Alps. For dinner we had the pleasure of experiencing a fantastic dinner at a diary farm just outside of Salzburg. We sampled schnapps and enjoyed each others company. After dinner we began our quest to find strudel. Unfortunately we admitted defeat after realizing many shops were closed. However, our defeat was short as we found apple strudel at our service stop at a restaurant in the middle of the Austrian Alps. Now that we have filled up on strudel we continue our journey to the motherland: ITALY! First stop: Venice. Lets get lost in the narrow canals of Venice.
Ciao ciao!
Krista
The mountains are calling... but I still live with my parents 