Between September 19-24, I got to return to Prague, partly for Fulbright orientation.

The first two days were super fun exploring with my fellow ETA Trishia.

We stayed in Dlouhá Traveller’s Hostel centrally located in Old Town. It was many-storied and a bit impersonal, but two highlights were the bangin’ hostel breakfast and decoration of the room:

On Friday night, we explored twilit Old Town and went to the Prague “Beer Museum” across the street from the hostel, which is actually an American-style pub with many taps, BLISSFULLY all Czech!

The next day we aimed for sightseeing.

Now, at this intersection… (Staroměstské Naměsti or Old Town Square)

…the crazy started.

Of course, we didn’t realize we needed to pay 100 CZK ($5) for this… Damn tourists. Except I am one.

But that doesn’t make Old Town Square less breathtaking.

From there, we headed towards the Charles Bridge…

To me, Charles Bridge is everything I dreamed it would be. Exactly as beautiful as in the pictures and more. On the bridge, there are tons of artists/craftspeople doing caricatures and selling handmade jewelry and other wares, jazz bands, and lots and lots of LIFE.

Once you cross the bridge into Prague 2, you can head towards the famous Lennon Wall. This is where people would write complaints during the Communist regime, and was thusly a serious source of irritation.

Of course now, it’s just full of lovers’ names (to complement the locks, I suppose), curse words, and some words of wisdom. Twas pretty inspiring nonetheless.

I touched the butt!

Of course tired after all of this walking (it also rained on us), Trishia and I went to nearby cafe Cukrkávalimonada and had some delicious leek soup.

And finally – even though we were tired and it was steep – to get the best view of Prague, we went to Petrín Hill…

This is also known as lovers’ hill, and it’s recommended to take a bottle of wine and hang out. I can see this, as it’s so chill and there were very few people while we were there.

This ended a pretty cool day 🙂 That night we saw “Guardians of the Galaxy”… WOW IS THAT THE BEST MOVIE EVER. With a bangin’ soundtrack no less.

During orientation, I was sick with a cold, so to clear my sinuses, I ordered Indian food to the hotel…

And during the next few days, I got to visit Café Slavia, a famous and favorite haunt for intellectuals and literary types during the Soviet regime.

Those truffles looked amazing but sadly, the service here was underwhelming, as it’s so touristy, and I was a bit disappointed 😦

Afterwards, I spend some time at the Globe, an expat bookstore and café, as I was direly in need of something to read (I’d finished Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on the train ride up). So, I bought Divergent, which was awesome, shout out to Shifa 🙂

One of the highlights of this trip was a visit to famously tasty Angelato’s, where I got Jasmine Rice gelato. It tasted like rice pudding!!!

And THE highlight…was our reception at the house of the new U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic. I got a picture with him SQUEE

Note the height difference, as usual. 😛

All in all, a great trip. I really hope next time to go and just gaze pensively off the Charles Bridge for a few hours. It’s such a lovely place to dream and reflect.