Spice Up Your Life

This weekend was action packed, and ended with Megan and I watching Spice World. It was my first time seeing it, and probably my last time seeing it. Although the movie inside a movie inside a movie with 8 different plot lines was way ahead of its’ time.

Friday was spent kind of watercoloring and then an attempt to find a beer garden that overlooks the city in Letna Park. We kind of wandered around the park and ran into a giant metronome and a big concrete space filled with skate boarders and kids drinking beer. It reminded me of the brick yard (?), sort of. Anyways we got pointed in the direction of the beer garden and eventually ran into one, although it wasn’t the one we were looking for. It had a cool atmosphere though and we all got some brews with potato pancakes of course.

Saturday was CRAZY. We woke up at 8 and were headed to the gypsy market by 9. It was pretty much just a normal flea market, except with more sausages and Nazi paraphernalia than I would normally see. I got a Mucha book, and then we went to a Design market that was going on near the river. This one was definitely more clean and had lots of beautiful handmade t-shirts, jewelry, and bags.

Afterwards, we went to Dish Fine Burger Bistro. This place was recommended to my friends by their ID professor who is a food critic specializing in burgers, soo needless to say my expectations were very high. With my first bite, I knew that this burger was the best burger I’ve ever tasted in my life. It’s been 3 days and I’m still thinking about it. Their professor said he rated these burgers at a 4.5 out of 5, right behind Chuck’s Burgers in downtown Raleigh.

This weekend was also the United Islands Music Festival happening in a park right outside of the city (it’s usually in the city on the islands of the river, but due to flooding this couldn’t happen). The park was awesome though, there were 5 stages with tons of green space for hanging out in. We got there at about 5 and listened to one band for a while until the heavens opened up and rain poured down for a good 15 minutes. It wasn’t that bad, but it was definitely enough to get my friend group split up for the next hour or two (One of the only times I’ve missed having my cell phone). Gary and I wandered around for a bit, got some beer and chicken, and then sat down and scanned the crowds. We eventually did find them right before the main headliner, Aloe Blacc, took the main stage.

Aloe Blacc “You Make Me Smile” from The Qualities of Light on Vimeo.

I’d never heard of this  man before or any of his songs, but he rocked it. He had us all singing along and dancing for the next hour. These are some of his songs, I think they were better live but they’re still pretty good on here.

  

After the concert ended, we took a long tram ride back to the city and hit up U Sudu and then Chapeau Rouge for some house music dancing, but Megan and I mostly just people watched and rested her ankle. A pair of Europeans were talking to us & were very easily convinced that we KNEW Michael Jordan simply because we were from NC…

We raced through the streets to catch the night tram (It only comes every 40 minutes) as it passed us on the road. We made it, and got back to the Pension safe and sound just before sunrise. We went to Radost for brunch in the morning per usual, and then to the Institute for some afternoon watercoloring and skyping. This is our last week of class! I’m 3 watercolors away from being done 🙂 I can’t wait.

 

Day Trip: Kutná Hora

On Saturday, Sarah, Holland, Stephen, and myself caught the 10 AM train to Kutna Hora. The UNESCO World Heritage Site is an hour outside of Prague, and is known for its grand churches and silver mining. The train kind of dropped us off in the middle of no where, so we jumped on a bus that we hoped/assumed would bring us to where we wanted to go. After about 15 minutes of passing beautiful wine country and winding through some random neighborhoods, we were sufficiently confused.. and became even more confused when some of the locals started yelling at us and motioning for us to get off of the bus. It didn’t look like we were near anything significant whatsoever, but even the bus driver was trying to scurry us off — so off we went.

From our past experience there’s usually a swarm of tourists all going to the same place so it’s easy to find what you’re looking for, but this was like a ghost town. We wandered around a street until we found someone who didn’t really speak english to try to give us directions to the center of town. He tried explaining something about a fountain and then just pointed the opposite way we came and just said “Go”.  Oooook.

That was all the direction we needed really, because we did end up finding a giant fountain and everything else we had been looking for. The town reminded us of a Cesky Krumlov, but with wayyy less tourists. It was quiet, quaint, peaceful & colorful. We walked along this awesome passageway that led us to the famous St. Barbara’s Church.

 

This church is was of the best known in the Czech Republic and was amazingly beautiful inside. It was also here that my camera died 😦 so the rest of these pictures are from Holland and Stephen.

For lunch, we went to Cafe Harmonia (as was recommended by TripAdvisor) and sat outside in the shade. I got this chicken tortilla thing with bleu cheese that was pretty tasty, and then a crepe for dessert.

After lunch, we walked around the town and ran into this lovely green space at the bottom of the hill, there were some locals with their dogs sitting around but other than that, it was pretty empty. We wandered around for a bit and enjoyed the weather.

We found the bus station again and rode it to the nearby town of Sedlec to see the famous ossuary. It’s this small church decorated with the bones about 40,000 people. They weren’t killed specifically for decoration.. they mostly just died from the Plague and then were used to decorate the church? It was more quirky than sad or scary. There were 4 different skull pyramids and even a bone chandelier — the point was to show the people that everyone is equal after death. A pretty powerful way to convey that message I think.

Overall it was pretty crazy (and awesome), and we spent about half an hour gawking at everything. After that, we had seen all we had really come to see, and decided to head to the train station to make the 5 PM home. We sat on the back porch and drank wine, enjoying the mild weather and lack of people staying at the Pension this weekend.