The Last Days - Prague, Oct. 20

Well I'm definitely glad I visited Prague, it's quite a nice city! Definitely a nice place to spend my last few days in mainland Europe. I'll admit, I didn't spend a whole lot of time out and about. I've gotten a bit exhausted of travelling, so I spent a decent amount of time just relaxing in my hostel. It's been a fairly nice place to stay, though it does have it's weird quirks. For example, you have to get buzzed in at the front door every time you want to enter, and the shower head in my bathroom isn't held up high, you have to hold it yourself. But it's otherwise been good, free breakfast is always a bonus!

Anyways, as I said, I went and explored the city center, which is a really nice area. It's very heavily pedestrianized, very few streets have cars driving on them. Those that do are very low density and move slow, so it feels very safe. There's also lots of streets with tram lines running through, there seem to be a lot of trams from what I've encountered. I also came across several small alleys that reminded me of Diagon Alley!

I came across a bridge going over the main river, which was exclusively for pedestrians. It was also surprisingly warm, I was expecting a cold breeze coming from the water, but apparently not! There were a handful of artists on the bridge drawing caricatures of people. And the views from the bridge were very nice, the leaves are definitely starting to turn colors more now!

While I was crossing the bridge, I noticed a large hill with lots of trees on it. I quickly looked at a map, and it's a large park area, so I headed straight for it. And I'm certainly glad I did, this park is gorgeous! Very well kept, and there are a handful of flower gardens at the top. It was a really nice area to walk through, although it was quite steep on the side!

There's an observatory at the top, and I noticed this sundial right outside. But this doesn't look like any sundial I've seen before, it seems way more advanced. There's a sign next to it with information in Czech, but a lot of it has faded. I tried using Google Translate on a picture of it, which was very difficult to read, but it called out something about time zones. There are 2 different sundials, so I wonder if they're calibrated for local time and GMT (it was cloudy, I couldn't verify). There's also a figure 8 thing on the left, which I suspect is some kind of calculator or something, I'm really not sure. Anyone have any ideas?

One other thing I really wanted to visit was the Prusa Lab. Prusa is a company that makes really good 3D printers, and they're based in Prague, so I wanted to visit while I'm here. And holy moly is their building ugly! But that's okay, I've seen pictures of the inside, which is a lot nicer. I don't think their building is open to visitors, so I didn't try to go in, but that certainly would have been cool!

And that's all I've done in Prague. I've definitely enjoyed exploring around here, it's a very nice city to be in. I did feel a bit more uncomfortable than normal since I don't know any Czech, but everyone I've talked to knew at least a bit of English, so it hasn't been a problem. Definitely glad I came here!

And that's the last of mainland Europe for this trip! I'm flying back to England tomorrow, so I'll get to see the airport here too before I leave. Since England isn't part of the Schengen area, there's extra rules in place for travelers. Everyone needs to fill out a form with information about where you've been and where you're staying, plus everyone has to take a test on day 2. There are other rules too, but I think those are all that I need to worry about (I've done the form and scheduled my test already). These rules are a bit different from when I first came in September, so hopefully I'm following them right!

I will follow up with at least one more post when I'm in England. Don't know if I'll have anything new to say there, so there might not be much else after that. I'll try to make it clear which post is the last one, so keep an eye out!