Czech Republic

Many of you are probably thinking: Why haven’t they gone up to see the castle yet!  It’s so spectacular!  I don’t know, but we never did end up going to see the castle.  We heard rumors of another sight not far from Prague that sounded so much more unique and exciting to me that we went there instead!  It was the Sedlec Ossuary, a church whose cellar is completely full of (and decorated with) human bones!  This is not the type of thing that even exists in the US so we jumped at the chance to go.  It took a two hour train ride to get to the town, a suburb of the city of Kutna Hora.

Sedlec Ossuary

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JAZZ!!!

As we walked around Prague we saw so many signs for live jazz that we knew we had to get out and see some.  And we met a very cool Dutch couple and an Irish guy at the hostel who wanted to come with us!  The first night we were there was a Sunday and so I went online to try to figure out what was going on in the town.  The internet in the hostel at that time was slow enough to be completely useless, so we ended up just marking some places on our map and heading out on the town.

We dubbed it the “Jazz Crawl” and aside from the company and the chance to see the famous clock strike at night time (there is no trumpet player at night) it was a jazz failure.  We went by about 5 different possible places.  Three of these were closed because it was Sunday.  One was expensive enough that we didn’t want to pay for it (although the music coming out of the doors sounded pretty good).  The one place where we actually heard a little jazz was called Jazz Republic and as far as I’m concerned gets a mixed review.  The music was just okay.  The atmosphere was pretty good except that even though they advertised it as free you could only get in for free if you sat in a tiny area at the back of the room where you couldn’t really see the band very well.

We decided to try again the next night and to abandon the “Jazz Crawl” concept.

Justin did a little research and our Dutch friends paid attention while they were out walking around and we all came to the same conclusion: Jazz Dock was the place for us.  And it was.  We were there while their summer workshop was going on, which meant that every night the workshop teachers and students would have a giant jam session.  It cost a little to get in, but very reasonable and the place had a great atmosphere.  So great that we went back for a second night in a row.  We had an amazing time, heard some great music, and loved getting to know our new friends.

If you’re looking for jazz in Prague, definitely check out Jazz Dock!

Our second day in Prague was laundry day.  The hostel told us about two possible laundromats, so we set off for the closest one first.  Could not find it.  We found the address, but there was definitely not a laundromat there.  So we headed on to the second one.  Also could not find it.  Went to a hotel and asked them if they knew of a close place to do laundry.  They gave us directions to the one we were looking for, and we headed over.  Out of business.  BUT, there was a fabric shop right across the street – which was closed.

We were about an hour and a half into this project by now and had no other leads.  So we went and had cake.

Delicious cake

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We arrived in Prague in the evening after a pretty long day of travel from Berlin, with a stop in Dresden.  We hadn’t been able to get our first choice of hostel for the first night there, but we found one which was pretty cheap.  It wasn’t too hard to find and a quick subway and then tram ride later we arrived.  Probably plenty of people liked this hostel, but honestly, it was not for us.  Our room had a very sticky floor (spilled beer I believe) and smelled really, really strongly of AXE body spray or some such.  Like so strongly that it was hard to breathe.  We made a swift retreat back into town and had a beer and some dinner.

That night we didn’t sleep so well because of the people in our room coming back from the clubs at 4 in the morning and having a really loud conversation about their friend who apparently has a habit of starting fights.  Oh boy…

Fortunately, we moved hostels the next day and the one we went to, the Dizzy Daisy, was a really good place to stay.  It also had a kitchen, so we were able to cook some of our own meals.  We got settled in and then headed out for another free walking tour.  It was a very hot, sunny day, which was great for taking pictures, but not so great for all the walking.  We even considered ditching the tour in the middle when we came across an awesome band playing on the street.  We stuck it out though and were rewarded with some good shots of the city.

The famous clock tower

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