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The first of two big days of Praha [Prague] exploration. Duha and I started by taking a tram that brought us to the center, on the quays of the Vltava river (probably the biggest river in Europe I’d never heard of). Being Saturday today, there was a large crowded market, where we treated ourselves to various delicious food, for very cheap.

The stomach ready to explode, we needed a walk to make us go through the digestive period. Hence, we climbed to the Vyšherad, a walled fortress on a hill in Southern Praha, with great panoramic view over the city, gardens, and a black-rock church.

Once back down, we took another tram to the center proper, and stumbled onto a political protest in front of the imposing National Museum. As a big fan of waving flags when I travel, that was a cool surprise. We walked among the crowd of the main shopping and touristic streets, until reaching the famous Astronomical Clock Tower. It’s a beautiful piece of clockwork, sadly not working, in the middle of a very large place, overlooked by a scary-looking gothic church.

Praha is just mindblowing. Every single building has some piece of art, or is one in its own right. Everywhere you look looks just fantastic. It doesn’t have an historical center, it IS an historical center. No huge 2 x 4 boulevards here, near the old town!

We escaped the crowd walking North, up to a bridge that gave us a nice view over the more notable Charles bridge. Where we soon found ourselves. It is ended on both sides by massive gothic towers, which you can climb. We wanted to do that on the West tower, which is smaller and much less visited, as advised by the guys from yesterday’s bar. However, it closed in just 10 min, so we decided against it. We still managed to catch a bit of the sunset from the bridge itself, illuminating the already gorgeous Praha in beautiful pink and orange colors.

We kept walking through the narrow streets of the center, had a drink, and finally took the tram back to the appartment. Tiredness is definitely showing now, and we fell asleep pretty fast.