The two faces of Prague

It's kind of a freaky thing to come to a new city through the rougher part of town after a 6 hour train ride. The park behind the main train station is an area where "questionable caracters", as the lonely planet calls them, hang out. There was still day light but it was on it's way out and walking arround with a big back pack and some other random bags and things didn't quite seem to fit into the decor. Moments after a feeble attempt to get my bearings, my sister and I wanted to walk to the hostel, since the flyer says it's a 10 minute walk to the next metro station, followed by a 5 minute walk from there to the hostel. "We can manage that, tough girls that we are" Renee and I tell ourselves. So we go to ask the kind lady at the information desk how to walk to Florence bus station since the lonely planet map is crap and the hostel flyer is difficult to read. "Just take the metro", she says, "yes, but how can we walk there?" we ask again. "Just take the metro!". We turn and face each other "uh, I guess we're taking the metro...." So we take the metro and figure we can walk the remaning 5 minutes to the hostel. We turn the street away from the metro and see some paramedics calmly looking down. What could this be?, Renee and I wonder. Turns out it's a dead man, who has possibly died of an overdose...whatever it was, he seemed to have left this world in a peaceful state.

So we finally get to the grafiti covered youth hostel, all we want is a shower from our half hour trek, long train ride and short morning where showering had not been an option. (Sleep was more important at that point in time).

This morning, however, my memory of Prague and last night's introduction did not do me justice! Renee and I walked about Prague's old quarter, treated ourselves to a cheap boat tour, went up to the caslte, down golden lane and dragged our heavy feet back to the hostel where we bought ourselves a record cheap meal. 53 Krones later (1 Candadian dollar is 20 Krones) we had enough to make a small but delicious salad....

All I can say is taht it's not taking that long for me to get back into the groove of backpacking, after a month long break of being with friends in Serbia and Germany!