I wish I could come up with a clever name for the first day of our trip...

My next few posts are going to be about my trip.  If you don't want to read about it, here's your warning :)

We left for Prague on Friday and flew through Portugal to get there.  We had a 3 hour layover in Portugal, and while normally, I don't really care about layovers.  It sucked big time.  We were tired.  We had already been flying for 7 hours and still had another 3 to go before we reached Prague, and that 3 hours was just spent fighting to stay awake. 

However, we did come across a friendly face in the airport:

So, we were the ONLY people that seemed amused by this RIDICULOUS bear.  Everyone else just stared at us like we were insane for taking our pictures with it.  How do you NOT take a picture with it???

We FINALLY get to Prague, and our driver is waiting for us (I sound so high class there, no?  I had a driver waiting for me?).  It was actually just a van from the hotel that came to get us, but we weren't complaining.  We were too tired to try and figure out their public transportation.

The driver was awesome.  He had been sitting in the lot too long waiting for us, so he was going to have to pay to get out.  So, instead, he just piggybacked his way through the exit behind a car in front of him and avoided the toll.  He then proceeded to drive 90 mph through the city to our hotel.  (And my parents think I drive fast...).

We get to the apartment we are staying in, and the owner sits us down and gives us our first beer (just the first of many):

She basically refused to let us go upstairs and sleep.  She made us go walk around the city for a few hours, and then we could come home and go to bed (and do our best to avoid the whole jet lag feeling for the week).  She was very adamant about this.  So...walk around the city we did.

Right next door to the hotel, this lovely brewery:

Could we have picked a more perfect hotel/apartment set up? 

And, keeping with a theme we had for this whole trip, we were within one block of a sex shop (seriously, EVERY hotel we stayed in was less than a block from a sex shop, we made fun of Figgs for his selection of lodging). 

So, other than the breweries and sex shops, we also did make sure we visited as many monuments, castles, etc as we possibly could.  I won't post all the pictures, but you can get an idea from these:

Um, I'm not entirely sure I remember what everything is...so you don't get any labels.  Worst trip description ever. 

While there, their hockey semi-finals and finals were taking place. And it was the Czech Republic vs Slovakia (how much more awesome can you get?).  So, they set up in the square of old town with a large screen and speakers, and broadcast the game, and so many people flooded the square to watch:

Then, we went to Starbucks to wait for the bell tower to go off on the hour (hey, give us a break.  We were tired and it was the only place that wasn't packed full of people).  I tried to take a picture to make fun of myself for going to a Starbucks in Prague, and...all I succeeded in doing was taking a picture of myself where I look insanely tired, and you can't tell at all where I am. And then, I proceeded to fall asleep at the table for ten minutes while waiting for the clock to go off. 

You have to turn your head for this one.  Blogger is sucking it up with the pictures again.  I'm tired of fighting it.



But there's the belltower going off.  Not that you can tell or anything.

Then, we walked around some more, and at this point all of us were exhausted and still had about 2 miles to walk to get home.  We were not happy. 

But then, we came across this awesome work of art on some wall (the graffiti there was insanely prolific), and just had to laugh at how aptly it summed up how we were all feeling.

We finally made it back to the room and I crashed for about 14 hours.  But when we woke up the next day, we all felt fantastic and we were great for the rest of the time we were there.  I guess the hotel lady knew what she was talking about when she wouldn't let us sleep.  :) 

Ok, so I'll try to combine my next two days in Prague into one post.  Then, the rest of the cities should be much quicker!  We just did SO MUCH in Prague, it's hard to be succinct.