"East Meets West" a Prague Travel Page by Pounder73

If they did, they were joking or lying.

Unfortunately, when venturing into this country, I came down with severe bronchitis. (Blame it on Amsterdam) I spent one day on my deathbed, and a few others in the wondering around like a zombie. My friend took the reins for a good portion of this trip and thank God for Buddha that he was wise enough to bring antibiotics. This was a city that clearly represents where the East meets West, being a historical trade route between ancient civilizations. And you can see it every where you look. Cool stuff...

The obvious attraction, that everyone will have to see, is the Praha Castle. It sticks out like a golden thumb. It is a nice walk from the center of town, up the hill, to the castle, although the public transportation is much easier. Once there, buy the ticket that will allow you access to the closed off portion of the church/castle. For nothing else, it is a must to climb the tower of the church. It is about 300 steps that will make you dizzy by time you are done. It has got to be one of the more beautiful views of the city. Also you get to see things like where they held jousting and close up views of the alter. For a culture that embraced communism to show how it will fail, and in turn, turned (basically) atheist, the church was a spectacular site. Granted, the church was there before long before the thought of Communism

Don't get caught in only center part of town. Although the center part of town is a must, I enjoyed staying and venturing in the surrounding neighborhoods. In the center you have the daily farmers’ and street vendors’ market, Nostradamus’ clock, GREAT restaurants, great nightclubs, great *cough* strip-clubs, great architecture…etc… but they know that is where you will be. We found MUCH better rates on food/beer in the other parts of town.

It has been the greater part of the year, between visiting and actually writing my experiences on VT, so the figures may be off. But in the restaurant near our hostel, in the outskirts, a liter of beer was about $0.25 and in the inner city it was a couple bucks. And the prices for the food were dramatically different as well.