Day Nineteen - Castles, Hospitals and Beer

It would be way to easy to actually spill the whole hospital story out right now but I’m going to start at the beginning. We actually got an early start this morning, Prague castle is the largest castle in the world and when we have been past there before it has been amazingly busy so our plan was to get there first thing in the morning and hopefully beat the cues. Surprisingly it worked, as you can see in the photos we were so lucky, most of the places we visited within the castle were empty or nearly empty.

Firstly we visited one of the smaller churches on the site and it was beautiful. It was quiet and peaceful and we both loved the simplicity of the building.

Next we visited the old palace and the architecture was amazing. The roof itself was almost breathtaking and it was mostly original. The big green tile fireplaces were lovely and the doors … oh my god am I in love with the doors in Prague.

We visited the golden lane, which was a very cute little shopping street and then visited the dungeons, which were just a little bit creepy.

Finally we visited the main church, which was so breathtaking we spent nearly 30 minutes just wandering around amazed at the detail that was put into everything. I don’t think we have the knowledge anymore to do what they did here. Saying that it was only completed in 1920’s and took nearly 600 years to do.

Prague castle is perched at the top of a huge hill looking over the city of Prague and we then walked the copious amounts of stairs down to the bottom of the hill. We stopped half way down for a crepe and when we hit the bottom we found a very creepy pup that had simulated the middle ages with dead animals on the walls, straw all over the floor and a funny smell that made eating not an option.

See this is where it gets interesting, what we have found is that in these pubs and restaurants the toilets are located deep underground and hubby get all excited at venturing down there and exploring so regularly peas whenever we stop. This time sitting there waiting in this creepy pub for him to return I heard a big bang but didn’t think too much of it because I courier had just dropped off some boxes. After leaving the pub hubby decided to inform me he had fallen down the stairs and may or may not have broken his thumb.

Now we all know that men can at times over exaggerate however looking at his thumb which was turning a funny purple red color and swelling quite alarmingly I thought … my god he may have actually broken it.

The foxtel channel “Nat Geo” who coined the phrase “just get lost” probably didn’t have Prague hospital in mind but that is exactly what we did trying to find three different departments over six floors where all the signs were in Czech but we survived it and it turns out it wasn’t broken only very badly sprained.  We were told to ice it and try not to move it if we didn’t need to.

After listen to him whine about how cold the ice was and how sore his thumb was, we finally ventured back out into old town later in the afternoon. One thing Prague is famous for we have not yet tried is Absinthe. We found an absinthe bar that didn’t look too illegal and both ordered a drink. Unfortunately after the fist sip we both determined that we don’t particularly like Absinthe which reminds us of a mix between almost unbearably sour, liquorish and something terrible tasting but unrecognizable.

After slipping quietly out of the absinthe bar hubby then spent the next few hours making sure his thumb worked well enough to hold a beer. Happily we can confirm that we can hold a beer but is unable to use a knife or fork … yay for me.

We did manage to pick up a pretty amazing item to add to our travel collection. Its an egg of sort, well not really, it’s a lovely metal “thing” which has a lovely hand painted image of Maria inside and I have to say, I’m really excited at finally getting to put it up in my house. So we say goodbye to Prague tonight, tomorrow we are off to Rome.