I took a taxi to Prague Castle (Prazsky hrad) and found myself with ten million of my closest Japanese, German, Russian, and Spanish friends. It must seriously be annoying to be a local during the tourist months. Attempting to plow through the major historical monuments, I lept into the St. Vitus Cathedral (Chram svateho Vita) in the corner of the footprint of the castle. Security stopped me and asked to see my "ticket". I had apparently stepped into God's VIP section ticketless and would only be able to pass if I coughed up some koruna that would invariably go to help pay for one of the priests to get some monster rims on his Opel. I respectfully shrugged and stepped aside. I am sooo b-list.
It wasn't until later that day that I realized I knew someone in Prague. He was an old high school buddy that had come over from Prague as part of the Rotary Exchange Program. Even though being dumped in the middle of Wyoming in 1994 could be tantamount to Stalinist persecution, he made the best of it and even joined the swim team. We remember him as being the only kid with chest hair. I Googled him from the hotel and sent randomly-addressed emails to his domain, hoping to get the email naming convention right. I received a call two hours later and was catching up with him and his family over beers that afternoon.
We walked to Petrin Hill, a point overlooking the city near the Castle and had a pig knee lunch at Zhlato Tygra, a tiny bar where Vaclav Havel took Bill Clinton for a beer. I departed from my friends and found myself wandering the streets of Prague like a man on a mission.
Trying to take advantage of the last hours I had in Prague, I was a man consumed with trying to see all that I could in the span of 2 hours. I stopped to glance up Ginger's skirt at the dancing building, traversed across Charles Bridge a few hundred times, set up and then cancelled a massage, drank a Pilsner Urquell, made final scores for my hottie:ok-looker ratio (17:42), and found a last specimen of badly used English on t-shirts. I dumped 1160 koruna on the cab ride to the airport, found myself virtually alone in the terminal, jammed out with the bus driver to AC/DC, and cried to myself when I plopped down in my seat diagonally across from a screaming child.
Idea of the Day:
It wasn't until later that day that I realized I knew someone in Prague. He was an old high school buddy that had come over from Prague as part of the Rotary Exchange Program. Even though being dumped in the middle of Wyoming in 1994 could be tantamount to Stalinist persecution, he made the best of it and even joined the swim team. We remember him as being the only kid with chest hair. I Googled him from the hotel and sent randomly-addressed emails to his domain, hoping to get the email naming convention right. I received a call two hours later and was catching up with him and his family over beers that afternoon.
We walked to Petrin Hill, a point overlooking the city near the Castle and had a pig knee lunch at Zhlato Tygra, a tiny bar where Vaclav Havel took Bill Clinton for a beer. I departed from my friends and found myself wandering the streets of Prague like a man on a mission.
Trying to take advantage of the last hours I had in Prague, I was a man consumed with trying to see all that I could in the span of 2 hours. I stopped to glance up Ginger's skirt at the dancing building, traversed across Charles Bridge a few hundred times, set up and then cancelled a massage, drank a Pilsner Urquell, made final scores for my hottie:ok-looker ratio (17:42), and found a last specimen of badly used English on t-shirts. I dumped 1160 koruna on the cab ride to the airport, found myself virtually alone in the terminal, jammed out with the bus driver to AC/DC, and cried to myself when I plopped down in my seat diagonally across from a screaming child.
Idea of the Day:
- Follow me GPS tours of cities. This is something that I think Garmin should cash in on. A big complaint of mine is that I don't like touring around a city with the other cattle. I have often skipped big monuments or crowds to find the out of the way places. There should be a website that allows users to plot GPS waypoints in a city and provide a short narrative of their trip. Other users would then be able to download the trips (including waypoints and narratives) and skip around a city instead of constantly referring to their Lonely Planet books and crumpled maps. You could also couple it with downloadable mp3s (like tour guides) that would give you a narrative on the historic value of where you are. If you mash it with a social networking site, you could meet other people whose trips you found enjoyable or meet those people in person in the cities you were visiting.
Gratuitous Copycating of the Day:
- Orbix.cz. Any guesses as to who this website is trying to copy?
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