29.10.10
It has been twenty days since we left Australia. Zoe and I have become quite homesick, missing our families and friends. The fact that both of us were struck pretty badly with colds didn't make things any easier!
As planned, we met in the foyer of St Christopher's Inn in the morning to attend the 3 hour long free tour of Prague (Praha). Mid way through the tour I felt like dying, standing in the cold wind listening to Czech history. The sites of the Charles bridge, the Astronomical clock and the castle were awesome and the architecture of the city is superb. Despite the beauty of Prague, nothing could take my mind off how badly I was feeling! Zoe laughed at me saying that I had a bad case of man flu. I had the last laugh when she developed similar symptoms later that day! After the tour, I demanded that we returned to the comforts of our 5 star "hostel" to get warm and rest. We didn't even get dinner that night!! Pretty rare for me! I had the worst night sleep ever! After 12 med lemons, 2l of orange juice and a Twix X Large, I was still not feeling very well at all.
Zoe left while I was sleeping and returned with cereal, milk, bananas, yoghurt and juice! She looked after me! I think I got 2 hours of sleep that night! In the morning, we decided to extend our stay further! We increased it by 1 night to a total of 3 nights to make sure that our health didn't prevent us from taking in the entire city! This was not enough! We extended it by one more night after we had explored the other side of the river a little more! There was a plaque mounted on one of the statues on the Charles Bridge. We had lined up to rub the female saint which is supposed to mean "good luck"and ensure that you return to Prague one day if touched. We were trying to get a photo of each of us rubbing the plaque before a lady pushed in front of us! Karma worked it's magic as she rubbed the incorrect Plaque. She had rubbed the dog which is supposedly unlucky.
The castle is a grand building that overlooks the whole of Prague! Amazing views from up top! We asked two Aussie girls to take a photo of us with the lanscape behind us. They replied "Sure, only if you take on of us too!" We didn't get there names and we went our separate ways! That night, we thought that a Prague Pub Crawl would fix our colds. We were wrong, but had fun nonetheless! The pub crawl went to 4 different pubs and clubs around Prague and partying is a must do in Prague. The entire Eurotrip film was filmed in Prague. This is where we met the Aussie girls again! Their names were Lisa and Katie. They are our age and originally from Adelaide. They now live in London like us!
We also met a few more americans and Fiona from Dublin Ireland. She was pretty cool and she could dance like Shakira! Hysterical! After 90 mins of power which involved unlimited beer, sangria, vodka, absynth and rum our friend Katie ran into a few problems! She needed to get home and in a hurry! Only snag was that no cabs were willing to take her! Being the gentleman that I am, I kindly offered to carry her as her shoeless feet dragged along the cobble stones! I believe that she will help me out somehow when we are in London! It was the least I could do! This meant that Zoe and I would leave relatively early! We walked back to the hostel at 2.30 am and made sure to stop at the convenience store to reload with vitamin C.
Today we were still feeling terrible! We tried to book yet another night, but the hostel was fully booked for Halloween weekend. The hostel is hosting a Halloween Party and their Grand Opening. We spent the day resting and researching how to get back to London. We were horrified. Flights to London were through the roof and accomodation in London is beyong a joke! We were going to have to pay 160 euros each to get home and in addition pay approximately 80 pounds per night for a budget hotel in close proximity to London City.
We are scheduled to leave on a 2 week trip to South Africa next Thursday, so we are still quite unsettled until we return to London when we can search for permanent accomodation. I suggested that we stay in Prague and Zoe managed to find an additional 3 nights accomodation for 30 Euros per night. Better yet, the flights are only 94 Euros in a few days time. So we have managed to save on accomodation and travel! This is quite timely given that our travel budget has depleted so rapidly! It has been worth every cent though and neither Zoe nor I would change it for anything! We have travelled to Malaysia, U.K, Italy, Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic over a few short weeks! We have met lots of fun, interesting people and have had awesome experiences that we will remember forever!
Once we return from S.A in 3 weeks time is when the stress, hard work and perserverence will kick in! I think that this is awesome experience and is a pretty awesome challenge to face in your life!