I woke up early, at around 5 AM. We still had around a hour until arrival, but I couldn’t fall back asleep. Eventually, we got a knock on the door, and everyone else also woke up. We were given our breakfast – coffee and muffins.
Around 30 minutes later we entered the Prague. We cleaned up, and started to get ready to go out.
And then I stepped out…
Everything just felt surreal. I got out the train station, and was immediately greeted by the beautiful Prague buildings. I called my parents to tell them that I successfully got to Prague. From then on, I simply walked to the random streets, in the direction of Stare Miesto.
Morning Prague was incredible. There was barely any people around, so I got to take many great photos and roamed around the beautiful streets alone or only with few other people.
I got to the Karluv Most, and there was a lot more people there, but it was still not too crowded and beautiful.
I got to the other side, and walked a bit further. I kinda realized that I should probably come back and explore the old city some more, and not go too far from my hotel. Mind you, I was walking with a heavy backpack all this time, so walking wasn’t the easiest task. I came back to the city and started looking for a place to eat at. Eventually I found a nice place on a quiet street, and seated myself there. I got Eggs Benedict and Cafe Latte.
It was really yummy. It was the first time I paid for something in Czechia, so I was kinda worried whether my card would work or not, but everything went fine. I decided to get some cash exchanged, and the moment I stepped out from the Cafe, there was an exchanger like 5 steps away, lol. I exchanged 300 USD to 6000 CZK, which wasn’t the best exchange rate, but whatever…
I walked further into centre of the city, and saw my hotel for the first time. ███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████
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I went into the other random direction, which led to another bridge.
I saw a park above the tunnel, so decided to get up there.
This ended up being one of my favorite places in Prague. There was almost no people, and the view was incredible. I spent like an hour just sitting on that bench, resting from all the walking. By that point I already started getting quite tired from walking with big ass backpack. There was still like 4 hours left til I could check in to my hotel.
I came back to the city centre, and holy hell, it was filled with tourists to the brim! There was so many people everywhere, it felt really uncomfortable. I was so glad I could actually experience Prague at morning without all this mess. Some streets were completely packed, while others (often adjacent) were empty. It was so weird.
At that point, all I could think about was to just get into my hotel and rest. My feet started to hurt, and I was just tired from the train ride, shit sleep and constant walking. I spent most of the time by that point sitting on some bench in the shadow, surrounded by a ton of people. I honestly regretted coming back from that park. At first I was sad that I booked second hotel far away from the centre, but now I’m actually really glad…
When it was almost time, I went to get a lunch. It was expensive and took a while, but it tasted incredible.
After this, I finally got to my hotel. █████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████
I finally got into my room and could take a shower. Then layed in bed and I felt like I would never walk again… Called my parents to tell about the experience so far, and then ██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████.
Some guy from my Discord server said that he’s in Prague and could meet if I want. I did a lil «interview» to learn more about him, and he seemed like a cool dude, so after a lot of hesistation I accepted the invite. I was really anxious, because it was my first time ever meeting someone on internet. But at least it was someone I didn’t know that much, so if wouldn’t go well, it’d get brush off quickly.
We met near the astronomical clock. It was really awkward at first. Both of us never really spoke English that much, and we both were a bit shy I guess. We started walking and talking a bit. We searched for some pub for a while, and arrived there after a lot of wrong directions.
The pub looked so fucking cool!!! Literally the most authentic place you could visit in Prague. There was a lot of older people drinking there, and the atmosphere was amazing. I got treated with a Czech beer, which I wanted to try but never would if I was alone.
After the first beer, suddenly it became so much easier to talk lol. Bruh, it’s actually annoying how easy chatting becomes when you get drunk… I wish I could do it without having to drink. We didn’t even talk about like internet stuff that much, most of our topics were about Ukraine and Czechia and other stuff. We talked about programming jobs and other shit. It started raining, and it only added more vibe to the atmosphere. The pub eventually closed and we got kicked out after 2 beers. The rain mostly subsided jy then, so we just started to walk around the Prague, and he kept telling me about whatever historical places we stumbled upon on.
We went to the river, and just walked really far by it’s shoreline and chatted.
At that point I could barely walk. We started going back, and had to split up fairly close to my hotel.
Overall, it went great. Much better than I thought it would. But alcohol definitely carried us… without it, it’d probably be just awkward as hell for the most part.
I got to my room, chatted and spent some time on internet, and fell asleep.
