Preezing in Prague (and AzA J title)

At the end of January we got some really cheap flights to Prague and spent four days seeing what it had to offer. Cold. That's what it was offering and we weren't so quick to be buying more cold. We had enough cold in Dublin for our winter. Ireland had record snowfall, the most in 10 years, in early January. We got used to slipping and sliding our way to work then and were pretty sure it wasn't a fun climate to live in.

But Prague was so much more than just a snowy winter city. We went on a free walking tour on two of the four days. The first one took us around the city centre and Jewish Quarter which was virtually untouched by the second world war. Interestingly, the war was seen to have started in 1938 in Czech as Hitler invaded their country a year before the war was declared after their takeover of Poland. Even more interesting is that Prague was one of the last places to be freed from Hitler's rule and was held till the last moment of the war in 1945.

The Jewish Quarter has one particular church which is now a memorial to all Czech Jews who were killed in the war. Every name that was found of a Jew who was killed in the war is hand-painted onto the inside wall of the church. Also, there are many items owned by the deceased that were buried in concentration camps so they would be found later and the people who left them remembered. The graveyard at the back has graves 10 deep as the government during the war would not allow the Jewish people to have any more land to bury their dead. So instead of lying them side by side, they built up the walls of the cemetary and laid the coffins on top of eachother.

The second tour was of the castle area of Prague. We saw some of the most beautiful views from the top of the hill that the castle perches on top of. The Castle Monastry Brewery had one of the best views of the city.

We were so cold on this tour that I thought I would never be warm again! But we made it through the snow and the rain and the ice (and my really bad cold) and had a really good time. Definitely another successful trip!