61. Brothel

Hostel sounds like brothel. I have always thought that.  The fact that hostels have a reputation of a lot of sex and alcohol doesn't help the phonetic resemblance.  On top of that, as we were walking to our hostel late on Wednesday night, we saw two prostitutes working a street corner.  That was somewhat disconcerting.

Lucky our hostel PurPur-Crib 15 ended up being nothing like a brothel.  It was just very IKEA, which explained the sad excuse of a mattress I slept on for three nights.

Overall, this hostel was a nice place to stay, considering it was only $40 for three nights. 

On our first day in Prague we spent time in Old Town Square, and then went on a fabulous FREE walking tour.  Czech history is FASCINATING.  Seriously, I enjoyed every minute of it.  They have played a very interesting part in European history, especially in the past two hundred years.  Below is the astronomical clock, a famous landmark in Prague.  It is gorgeous, and has it's own interesting history.  Unfortunately, the little men that move on the hour (they represent vanity, greed, etc) reminded me of the hokey rides at Disneyland (primarily Pirates of the Caribbean).  Just another way that Disney has ruined my life.

Interesting thing about this clock: after the clock was finished, the ruler at the time didn't want its inventor duplicating the clock for any other empire, so he had the clock-maker's eyes gouged out.  The clock-maker, obviously angry, committed suicide by throwing himself into the gears of the clock.  His lodged body broke the clock, and it didn't work 100 years after that.  Interesting revenge.

Below is our tour guide Justin in St. Wenceslas Square.  He really did a great job.  He talked like someone that snowboards or surfs a lot, but his ability to recite Czech history for 3.5 hours was quite impressive.  I now know more about Prague than I do about Vienna.  We all agreed it would be a good idea to find a similar tour in Vienna so we can actually figure out more about the city we live in.