We arrived yesterday in Amsterdam, Holland! It is very Libral here, as i'm sure you are all aware of :). At the moment, Andrew is enjoying the sound of my typing on the laptop keyboard (in public)-- I wonder why? ;) so you can only imagine!
I last left off at our hostel in Prague-- Hostel Bontour. We arrived and were shocked to find our first scary hostel. I guess we were lucky to be living luxuriously in beautiful, clean hostels. Well, our luck had taken a turn for the worst with Hostel Bontour. We discovered that the reception area was in a separate building from the sleeping rooms-- and closed at 8pm! There were signs posted all over the sleeping rooms reading, "Do not open the door for anyone-- Anyone who belongs here can get in without your assistance." (We all had keys). The room itself that we stayed in was DIRTY! I was so grossed out that I refused to leave anything of mine out in the open. Jason refused to shower or change his clothes for three days. Eventually, we concluded that we could be starring in the next Hostel movie. Our plan was to spend as little time as possible in the hostel-- We stayed out every day from morning until very late at night. During our first night-- Jason and I hardly slept (Andrew was out like a light-- snoring away). But on the second night of our stay something frightening happened. We arrived back to our hostel late and were chatting with our roomates when suddenly the doorbell rings! It wouldn't stop-- it rang over 30 times-- over and over and over! HOSTEL 3! The mysterious doorbell ringers actually turned out to be three people looking to check into the hostel. Too bad the reception area closes at 8pm. We were thankful to leave Hostel Bontour!
Although Hostel Bontour was not so beautiful, the rest of Prague was! The pictures I will eventually be posting will prove it :). There was so much to do there-- Free walking tours, expensive tours, night tours, boat cruises, Prague Castle, and a ton of other sight seeing adventures. It is quite easy to navigate through Prague on your own and with the Metro, but equally as easy to get lost walking because of the many narrow alley-ways. We had our map/guide close by at all times-- Jason is definitely our City Navigator and keeper of the maps/guides. He seems to like doing that-- he is great at it, too! I think i'm more of the trip planner-- I know all the sights we need to see and plan out our time each day. Andrew is just a go-with-the-flow kind of guy. I think it is always good to travel with one of those go-with-the-flows because they are always happy and up for any kind of adventure! We are good travel buddies with a good system going on.
We did a lot of walking in Prague-- just enjoying the sights and scenery. It was a good time! We had lovely dinners out, enjoyed Czech Beer, visited many cool sights, Explored Prague Castle, laughed about the escalator, and went on a Haunted Prague Tour. Prague Castle was amazing. It dates way back to medeval times of peasants and torture, where King Charles IV was the ruler. The Castle is very well preserved with a wealth of information inside and on the Castle outskirts-- definitely worth visiting if you ever visit Prague. We also went on this haunted tour of Prague at night-- We needed a night filler to avoid returning to Hostel Bontour too early, haha. On our tour we were taken to a couple of different haunted sights (Prague is completely haunted and eerie in general). We learned of an enitre underworld of Prague filled with Catacombs and hidden tunnels. On the buildings of Prague, there are many statues of Gargoyles and evil faces. The reason why a statue of a Gargoyle or an evil face was built into the structure was to ward off evil spirts from cursing the building. It was said that if the evil spirit saw a statue of a Gargoyle or evil face on the building already, it would assume the building was already possessed and move onto another building. Hence, why there are so many Gargoyles and creepy faces on many of the buildings. Another highlight of our time in Prague were the escalators. They are VERY LONG-- comparable to the ones in Washington DC, if you've ever been there. You need to try and picture this: Two long escalators side by side-- one going up, the other going down. Because the escalators are so steep it looks as if you are leaning either foward or backward. So if we are going up and decided to look next to us at the people going down-- they would look as if they were leaning back. If they looked at us-- we would look as if we were leaning foward. So as we went up, we would put our arms infront of us and pretend to be Superman. People actually laughed, too!! Anyway, it was very funny and probably a "had to be there" kind of thing. Jason also saved a life on the escalator! As we were going up the long esculator (with big backpacks and all!) an elderly woman infront of us fell as she was just about to get off. She fell back hard onto Andrew and I and then other people behind us began to push foward. We were stuck in a huge pile of people-- Somehow Andrew and I managed to escape it with minor bruises, but the woman who fell was being trampled. Suddenly, she is lifted off the esculator by Jason! He kind of just scooped her up and pretty much saved her life!
Only 6 more days left of our adventure in Europe-- I can't believe it's already ending!
Miss and Love everyone!
XOXO
<3 Allie, Andrew & Lifesaver