Prague

Prague is probably the most beautiful city in the world, and has definitely been one of my favourite stops so far. This is despite the fact that it rained almost the entire time we were there.
The historical centre of Prague is beautiful, and it is like walking back in time or onto a movie set. We also found Prague to be rather inexpensive and it has the best street food ever!
We had a few days in Prague so we got to do a little bit of exploring.
One of the first things we did was walk into the town square to where the famous astronomical clock is. Now every hour this clock does a performance, and every hour hundereds of tourists crowd around to see it. Don't get me wrong this clock is beautiful and an amazing piece of work especially when you consider how old it is and what it does, but this "performance" is  a little bit ridiculous. A few doors open,  a skeleton rings a bell and there is some sort of chicken that clucks.
Clocks aside we saw some incredible things in Prague.
The beautiful castle where we saw the changing of the guards, Saint Nicholas's church (this lead to a strange conversation about why Santa has a church and how baby Jesus delivers presents at Christmas not Santa) and we crossed three beautiful Charles Bridge. An absolute highlight was the nuclear bunker tour, we got to hear about the communist occupation of the Czech Republic after WWII and the lead up to the Czech Republic becoming a Republic. As part of this tour we got to go into a nuclear bunker that was built by the communists. Within the bunker there is a climbing wall, bar and a museum (yep 3 things you expect in a bunker). In the museum there was an amazing collection of gas masks and gas mask products including gas mask cribs for baby's complete with hand pump for Mum to pump air into the crib. We even got to try on a gas mask and hold an assault rifle (Simon advised me after I posed with it for photos that it actually was a real rifle).
Food was a definite highlight in Prague (ok it has been a highlight of the whole trip!). In the main squares there are a head of market stands, and a heap of food stalls. These stalls sold corn on the cob, ham off the bone, chips, spiraled fried potatoes, cider and hot dogs. But my favourite were these amazing donought like creations called Trdelnik, which is basically dough rolled around a rolling pin and cooked on a grill then rolled in cinnamon and sugar. Delicious!
One of the most interesting restaurants we attended was in Prague. Simon had a minor case of man flu so had spent one afternoon in bed sleeping (this was the perfect opportunity for me to buy a bohemian crystal vase when he wasn't looking!) so we set out to find something close to the hotel that was somewhat healthy, mainly not deep fried and served in a smoky tavern. Just around the corner from the hotel we found a restaurant that served pretty standard food - meat and veggies which sounded perfect. What we didn't realise was that this was a themed restaurant. So as we opened the door to get a table and a man dressed like Fred Flinstone complete with animal skin and face paint rushed to meet us. We had walked in to a cave man themed restaurant! We were taken into a large room which was made up with fake rocks complete with cave art and large (hopefully fake) bones decorating the place. To order your meal you were given a large menu and each item had a corresponding code, you had to write the codes down on a supplied notepad and then.... bang a giant rock on your table to get your waiters attention. In fact anytime you wanted anything such a drink or the bill you had to bang your table rock. The wait staff were all looking like they were from the set of the Flinstones and spoke in some sort of cave man language. It was a really fun experience (and rather noisy with all the rocks being banged) and the food was fantastic!
Prague was really one of my favourite cities, everything in the historical centre was just beautiful and it is definitely a place I will be visiting again. Although leaving Prague I was faced with the issue of traveling while keeping a bohemian crystal vase safe....