Prague day 3

Our final day we wanted to explore the St Charles Bridge and Prague Castle. We crossed the bridge in the morning and headed up the hill to the castle. A big long hill. Really high up. Look, an ice cream shop! Hmmmmm, ice cream. More uphill walking. And we're there!

The castle is amazing and huge. It houses the Prague Cathedral within its walls, plus all the current admin buildings, the Kafka house, and royal gardens. In the Prague Cathedral we were blown away by all the gold and silver statues, the giant stained glass windows and sculpture after sculpture. We decided to climb the 287 steps up winding staircase to of the North tower and were rewarded with incredible views of the castle, the bridges across the Danube and into Old Town Prague. Just incredible (and totally worth the dizzying, 2-way climb).

On the way back we stopped to admire the St. Charles Bridge. It's like a massive open market with people playing music, doing portraits and selling trinkets. the highlights are the 20 statues that line both sides of the bridge. Each is incredible, but the most prominent two are the ones of St. John's and a statue of Jesus with Hebrew letters. The St. John one is famous because supposedly a pious man had been thrown from the bridge at that spot during a Zionist period and if you rub the statue it means you will have good luck and will someday return to Prague (ok, twist my arm :-D). The second statue is supposedly a spot where a Jewish man was condemned for heresy and forced to put the words "Holy Holy Holy lord almighty" around the statue of Jesus as punishment.

That night we were set on having absinthe, and having seen good deals on it at the jazz bar the previous night we headed back to do some shots. We did the classic Fire Absinthe shot which is where they take a spoon full of sugar, dip it in the absinthe, pull it out and light it on fire to caramelize the sugar, then pour it back into the absinthe and shoot it. Holy crap what a shot. One of those and we were flying. We ended up staying at the jazz bar another night because the waitresses were cute and there were lots of travellers swapping stories (and because we probably would have gotten hopelessly lost outside :-p).

Awesome time in Prague. I always wondered how Little was able to stay there for 2 years and ow I wonder how he ever made it back. It has probably shot to the top of the cities so far.