In this blog post, I will tell you about our trip to Prague!!! So sit down and hopefully enjoy it!!

So some of you may know that my moms birthday was in January and we got her tickets to Prague, a place she had been already with a friend but came back with good reviews. We had heard stories and my dad thought it would be a great idea! For my mom’s birthday, I also handmade a scavenger hunt and each note was hidden somewhere special around our neighborhood. Anyways off to Prague we go!

We arrived at Prague and took a cab to our hotel called the BoHo Hotel (BoHo is short for Bohemia, more about that later). It was very fancy and a little weird. For example, the bathroom lacked privacy because the walls were made of glass, but I got to take a bubble bath, which was special because we don’t have a bathtub I Norway! I like staying in hotels because of they comfy robes, and big beds, and room service!!! I also like testing out the breakfast buffets. I was excited to see that the Boho hotel had some North-American cereals, like Cinnamon Toast Crunch, my favorite!!

Then we headed to the Charles bridge, which is the most famous bridge in the country. It’s a walking bridge that was built in 1357! It looked really old and gothic and had many cool gargoyles. The bridge was full of artists and people selling stuff. I got drawn by a caricature artist (see drawing below).

We hiked around and saw some cool little stores and we even saw a store called the kwiki-mart (from the Simpsons) and a classic gingerbread store. What was funny is that all the stores were called “museum,” so, for example, a coffee shop would be called a coffee museum. I think it was just to trick the tourists. My mom and I even fell for it and got sucked into a few and spent some money in the chocolate “museum.”

We were excited to try Czech food for the first time. We went for dinner in the Old Town Square. I discovered that the people of Prague really like pork knee pumpkin soup, potato dumplings, and goulash. We tried a platter with duck meat and dumplings. Dad got a pork knee, which ended up being the size of my head (very big) and he could only eat half of it. My favorite Czech food was their special dessert called Trdelník, also called trdlo for short (see below). They sell them on every corner! They are made from dough that is rolled onto a wooden pin, then cooked over hot coals. They can be eaten plain or with toppings. For instance, I wanted Nutella and ice cream. It was pretty messy but delicious. They taste like sweet frybread or doughnuts with sugar.

We went to the Prague castle, which was very old and it reminded me of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Then we saw the Golden Lane, which was a little village by the castle where the goldsmiths and sword-makers lived. Then we went and saw the torture dungeons and we saw many gruesome torture devices. Hand crushers, spiked thrones, a stretcher thing and other creepy devices. I got to dress up as the king and give sword fighting a try.

Today we went to the Lennon wall and saw lots of graffiti about him. Later, after many photos of the river, we decided to go hike the tower at the top of the mountain. (See below).we had lunch up there and took photos. Then we went walking around and it started snowing. So we went inside the tower and we got cold so we walked down the beautiful mountain.

Prague is very important to my family (Mom’s side of the family) because that’s where are we are from. Our family is German and we are from a part of the Czech Republic that was called Sudetenland, where mostly Germans were living. It was annexed (taken) by Nazi Germany during the war. However, when the German Nazis started the war, My grandparents were Socialists and were against the war, so they left and helped a bunch of other people escape too! That’s why I was born in Canada, not Germany, and why it was an important trip for us.

The part of The Czech Republic we were in was called Bohemia. In Bohemia, we saw cool crystals and the Traditional painted eggs and stacking doll. We bought some beautifully painted eggs to hang on our Christmas tree.

It was a super fun trip. We liked the medieval city a lot. Here are a few photos of me goofing around. I like liked all of the fun stuff happening in the old square. Especially the silver man who looks like a statue and the people blowing bubbles!!

Thanks for reading!! Stay tuned for more adventures with The International Moose!