After a few hours of sleep we were up again and headed out to meet Evan and his friends Alex, Kayla and Warren. We grabbed a cup of coffee and began our day of sightseeing. In the picture above Sloane and Evan are standing in front of the Old Town Bridge Tower, which is thought to be one of the most beautiful gothic towers in Europe and dates back to the 14th century.
From Old Town Square we moved onto the famous Charles Bridge which connects the Old Town to the castle and is famous for the many baroque-style statues that line the bridge.
We took a minute for a quick photo-op at the bridge, here with Kayla, Alex, Warren, Evan and Sloane.
From the bridge we made our way toward the Prague castle. Living in the UK we don't get to see our families as much as we might like, and Sloane was really happy that he was able to spend the weekend with his brother.
It was also fun for me to spend a little quality time with my future brother-in-law, and as we climbed the hill taking us up to the castle we took in the spectacular view.
Prague castle is one of the most awe inspiring buildings we've seen in our travels. This massive castle, once home to Emperors and Kings, is said to represent almost every architectural style of the last millennium.
My favorite part of the castle was St. Vitus Cathedral, Evan and Sloane are doing there best to look impressive in front the gothic church.
It was about time for lunch so we headed down back to town through the castle gardens.
Along the way we passed by the Wallenstein Palace's Grotesquery.
The garden's, which even include a vineyard, offer an impressive view of the city.
When we finally stopped for lunch we all were pretty hungry. We opted for a microbrewery called Pivovarsky Dum, which is known for their unusual beer flavors and serves traditional Czech food. I had no trouble washing down my goulash with the beer sampler that I ordered. I was one of the few that liked the nettle beer, while Alex was the only taker for the banana beer. The coffee beer was Sloane's favorite while the sour cherry made the top of my list.
They boys, much happier now after good food and better beer, decided it would be a good idea to take a nap before heading out for a night on the town. Our "Euro-night club" experience later on left me wondering how un-cool it would be to wear earplugs to down out the multiple levels of blaring techno music. Sloane was happy to confirm for me that a) I'm too old and boring to hang out with the college crowd and b) I am very un-cool
We met up with Evan and Warren the next morning. It was safe to say that they'd gotten much less sleep than Sloane and I after their night out, but there were no worse for the wear and happily joined our hike to the top of Petrin Hill.
At the bottom of the hill there is a memorial to the victims of communism which of a line of quite statues representing different phases of a human figure’s destruction. While the statues and the message was sobering, we couldn't help but notice that Evan with his abnormally long arms fit right into this memorial.
Petrin Hill is a park that rises above the city of Prague. There is a funicular railway that takes you to the top, but we opted to make the trip on foot.
At the top of the hill there is an observation tower which is very similar to the Eifel tower and has the best views of the city.
We spent the morning walking around the park and decided we had time for lunch and one last beer before taking off to the airport.
We stopped at the Strahov Monastic Brewery where we each had a pint of Dunkel, the Czech dark beer. A great way to end a whirlwind weekend!
