Drawing, nature, and more food

This morning Marni and I got up on our own time and spent the morning each doing our own thing. We've been having fun together, but we figured it would be nice to take some alone time to wander by ourselves. I went back to the Jewish quarter to check out the old cemetery, but it was too crowded and I decided to pass on it. I ended up back in the main square where the Astronomical Clock is. The marathon stuff was all cleared away and it was a little less crowded today because the weekend is over, so it was a bit more of an enjoyable atmosphere. The best part was a four-man band playing folk music and wearing traditional costumes. They were really good! One guy played violin, another played drum, another played a guitar that was like a lute, and the last played Bohemian bagpipes and another handheld pipe that was like a recorder. I spent at least an hour drawing in the square and listening to the music. I also went into a bookstore (there are so many neat ones in Prague!) and ended up buying a children's book about the life of Antonín Dvorák because I really liked the illustrations. Also saw the clock chime, which was surprisingly unimpressive. It really is a beautiful clock, but all that happens when it strikes the hour is that the figures move their arms and heads a little bit. And yet every hour, a humongous crowd of tourists stands around to watch it. Definitely a case of "see it just because it's supposed to be a famous attraction."

Marni and I met at 2 at the hostel for our afternoon excursion. We took the streetcar tram to a preserved forest area on the west edge of the city called Divokasarka, which is connected to an old legend about warrior women who fought there. It has lots of walking trails, and lots of hills. We spent about two hours wandering along some of the trails, but the area is really big so we couldn't do very much of it. The trails we did take were beautiful, though, and we got some awesome hilltop views! 

Around 5, we found our way back to the main road and took the tram back down into the city. We got off near the castle hill and walked for a little ways (with a brief stop in a nice confectionary shop--I got two different chocolates to try) and then ended up on Charles Bridge, where we drew for a little bit. We had a nice conversation with a guy around our age who was running two of the merchant booths with art and jewelry. He started talking to us because business was winding down for the day and he was bored. It turned out that although he was Czech, he had a girlfriend from Arizona, so he had actually been to the West Coast and knew about In-N-Out Burger! I thought that was funny. 

Marni and I checked out a lower-priced jazz club that we had read about on our hostel map, because we thought it would be cool to get dinner someplace where we could hear live jazz, but decided it looked like too much of a bar atmosphere for our tastes. We went to the supermarket one more time to get food for the trip home tomorrow, and then ended up going back to the place we ate lunch on our first day. Marni ordered the roasted vegetables with goat cheese again because she thought it was so good, and I had risotto with roasted vegetables and mozzarella. It was a lot mellower in the square by then because the day was almost over. We really enjoyed ourselves. 

When we got back to the hostel, we ended up talking for probably two and a half hours with the two other guys currently in our room. One, a 19-year-old from Vancouver, has been here for the last couple nights, and the other, a Londoner in his late 20s, got here last night. I asked the guy from London what style of music he played, because he had his guitar with him. So he played us a song, and it turned out the Canadian guy plays too, and both they and I play acoustic kind of stuff. So we ended up passing the guitar around for a while, and after that we all talked till really late. Sometimes the conversations take a weird turn for a bit and people definitely use, well, stronger language than I do. But I still really like these group late-night talks in hostels, because you never run out of experiences to share and compare. You learn so much about different cultures and different places from these kinds of conversations.

Anyway now it is really late--okay, make that early--and Marni and I are leaving in the morning. So time for bed! Lord willing, we'll be back in Hamburg by tomorrow night!