Go to Prague, just go!

During our last day in Budapest and throughout the entire 7 hour journey to Prague, we somehow managed to eat and drink barely anything. Yeah, I'm as baffled as you at this fact as I love my food so I don't know how I managed, though we worked out during the afternoon upon arrival in Prague that this would be why we felt so fatigued and irritable. The couple sitting with us on the train were annoying us beyond measure with their PDA, my mind was going AWOL with unnecessarily stressful thoughts and neither of us could keep awake for longer than a minute, but we finally figured why. We were 'thangry' - so thirsty that you become angry.

As soon as we got off the train in Prague we raced to a shop to buy and down two large bottles of water which semi revitalised us. What tested our 'Thanger' a little further though, was the rude customer service guy at the station looking at us as if we'd asked him to solve a difficult equation rather than asked which Metro pass was most worth our money. So rude, but we let it go and luckily the man at our hostel was very welcoming and helpful which counterbalanced our first impression of the Czech Republic. Another factor enhancing our immediate thoughts further was the price of everything. You could buy a pizza the size of a small restaurant table (no joke) for equivalent to 2 pounds. Even better, a pint in a standard bar in the city would cost you no more than £1.50. Obviously we had to test this out on our first evening and headed to one of the higher end restaurants along the river front and our entire bill came to 950 czk which is just over thirty quid!

Feeling jolly about this, we continued our evening at the John Lennon Pub which had such a good atmosphere, really cool decor and another menu filled with bargains. Before heading here though, we had to see the wall. A colourful array of inspirational (mostly) hippie quotes about peace and love, with the odd random "Fuck the world" thrown into the mix just to make it a bit more human. Sigh.

Though we loved this for the brightness it added to our camera rolls and the smiles it gave us reading all the quotes, it was rather irritating to see so many tourists not taking any of it in at all and simply posing for their Instagram feeds. I mean, it's a great backing to add to your photo I won't deny that and it's nice to show that you've been to something like this, but at least before you take the picture, actually spend some time reading and looking at the thing.

This situation has irritated us more than once on our trip. One occasion that springs to mind was in Budapest when my sister and I were reading up about the Shoes on the Danube Bank. Granted we were totally oblivious to the back story until we'd researched more, but it was pretty obvious that they were a memorial of some kind. This is why it made us angry when people were fleeting past, a quick pose in one of the shoes and skipping off again. Ignorant.

Sorry for that slightly cross aside but I'm sure you'll agree that this is one of the most annoying things about tourism. Anyway, back to Prague! So yeah, as I mentioned we were rather sleep/food/drink deprived and felt a sound nights sleep would recharge us for the following day where we intended on checking out some of the art exhibitions, catching views from the castle, trying the tempting donut cone ice-creams and of course testing some more cheap beer.

This all went to plan and we felt so much better the following morning. My foot, having been elevated all night, was feeling OK and we headed into warm, sunny, beautiful Prague to explore. We liked this place a lot.

We looked around the Andy Warhol exhibition, got a pedalo (which did wonders for my injured foot - not) and checked out the amazing view from the castle before heading back to get ready for a proper night out in Prague. Whether the iced tea that we had at Starbucks had something alcoholic or stronger it in I do not know, but I felt pissed already walking back so knew we were in for a great night. The only thing putting a slight dampener on my night, and I know I've not mentioned my poorly foot much at all, was that I had to rock the nice outfit with shit trainer combo to save the pain I'd feel walking back at the end of the night in pretty summery shoes. Had to be done.

Waking the next morning and really feeling every ounce of the copious amounts of wine consumed the night before, I lived in true backpacker style by having bread sticks for breakfast which we'd stolen from a restaurant in Venice. Don't worry, they were wrapped! Yuk.

We felt that the only way we could survive the day would be to stock up on all food that is bad for you and chill out in one of the many pretty parks of Prague, awaiting our night train to Amsterdam. So we did exactly that.

Our time in Prague ended as it had begun with the rudest customer service we've ever experienced. Every question I asked was responded by shouting from every person. Even the lady supposed to be in charge of EU rail dealing with the passes we had sent me to the first desk I'd gone to and there was no way I was going back to that horrid man! So, after this dramatic half an hour we were quite happy to be on our way to Amsterdam.

Bye for now Prague. We will return, but hopefully not to any station information booths.

Things I've learnt in Prague:
-being 'thangry' (as in so thirsty that you're angry, like 'hangry') is real
-the importance to keep topped up with water and proper food (else stress levels rise and tolerance levels lower)
-they actually treat zebra crossings as zebra crossings (except trams)
-their sirens are like a remix version of English sirens
-beer/wine/food is dirt cheap EVERYWHERE
-Czech doesn't have a 'k' in it so the currency 'czk' stands for 'Czech Koruna', my bad
-Also, 'gbp' obviously is 'Great British pounds' so why I've been typing 'gdp' into Google for conversions, I do not know
-going into an Irish pub doesn't mean that everyone in there is Irish. I was convinced the girl serving us was, but nope, she was very very Czech.