Have a Good Night, Good night, Goodbye.

Thusly, the Czech flight attendant greeted us in Prague, beginning our spring break, whose first stop in the capital of the Czech Republic yielded many similar turns of English phrase, beer cheaper than you could imagine in Paris, beautiful buildings, and awesome matching sweaters.

But first, the flight, the sketchiest of my life. Having booked it on a budget Czech airline allegedly called "Smartwings," according to its website "smartwings.com", I expected to find it listed as such when looking up my terminal on Paris-CDG's website. Smartwings was nowhere to be found, though, and my flight was allegedly being carried on an airline suspiciously called "Travel Service"

This suspicion was only amplified when my tickets were issued at the desk by some company named "Swissport." When Taylor, Alia, and I got to the plane, it was Travel Service again. When we got in the plane, it was Smartwings. Having had nothing answered as to the name of the airline, I decided to think of it as what it most certainly was: "Low Budget Czech Airline." The plane made Ryanair's fleet seem state of the art, and was most likely a relic from the communist era. My seat was broken such that it could fold in half. Nevertheless, we made it safely to Prague, eliciting the titular greeting in a thick accent from the husky looking Czech lady.

After touchdown, we made our way into Prague by skipping fares on the bus and metro, consecutively, thanks to help from a friendly local American student.

As we wandered from the metro station to our hostel, we turned a corner into Old Town Square, and immediately fell in love with Prague, as we stared up at the Disneyland-meets-Gothic-stronghold Old Tyn Church. It was around midnight, and the square was mostly empty, save for one open shop, selling beer and sausages. We sat ourselves down and got acquainted with Prague.

After checking in at our nice and very central hostel, we got a couple of pints at 40ish crowns: roughly 1.70 euros. We thought those were amazing prices. We had yet to truly get to know Prague.

We started the next day at the Easter Market in Old Town square, an installation that only added to Prague's nearly unsustainable quaintness. We eventually made our way over to the astronomical clock tower, which, despite hosting weddings what seemed like every twenty minutes, was open to the public to go to the top for only 50 crowns (2 euros(3 dollars)). The view was spectacular, as Prague has countless beautiful old buildings and a cascade of red tile roofs. After a meeting of couple nice British friends, we moved on towards the Charles Bridge. After all the walking, it was time for a beer. Or four. We pub-hopped for about four hours, trying pints in different neighborhoods, with prices plummeting to 24 crowns. Then it was time for a break before heading out to dinner at an Italian restaurant, which seemed to be the "specialty" of Prague. The tomato soup tasted good, but did not end up well for our stomachs, contributing to our night's early demise.

Before we headed in, though, we did stop at one bar, which brings up a very salient point about Prague. The Czech Republic is a country that still does not have a smoking ban in bars, making it the first country like that I've been to a bar in. I don't mind the smell of smoke, and sometimes I even enjoy it. But the bar we went to that night made the smoking ban seem like the best legislation of the past thousand years.

Starting off on the ground floor as a nice, but crowded and fairly smoky wine bar, it winded down several stories in a labyrinthine manner. The farther you descended, the smokier it got, and the more confusingly configurated and crowded as well. By the time you reached the last bar (or was it the last bar?) the air was so thick with smoke that it almost made moot the fact that you couldn't remember how to get back anyway. It hurt to open your eyes, and I'm positive I would've passed out from lack of oxygen had I stayed any longer.

Besides that adventure, though, Friday night was fairly tame, as our stomachs could not handle much besides that tomato soup.

Saturday was late starting and we headed off to get street food for lunch at the market. I got a delicious mix of potatoes, sauerkraut, cheese, and sausage. We followed this up with ice cream and then it was off to the commercial Melantrichova street for some cheap, Eastern European shopping. I settled on a pair of sunglasses and a sweet blue sweater with skulls and crossbones on it. Enticed by its incomparable style, Taylor and Alia bought one each as well, leading us to look like some sort of strange, hipster tour group. From there we did some pub hopping, even finding Hooters Prague (!) at one point. We got dinner at a neat, cheap, seemingly local Czech place where 6 euros got me a huge helping of curry penne pasta, a side of fries, and a pint of delicious Czech beer. We moved on from there, alternating between pints at a bar and cans of beer drunk outside. It was in this manner that Prague endeared itself to us. We didn't do nearly as much sightseeing as we might in other cities, but we got to know the city through its streets and its beer.

As a final note, the most hilarious translation in Prague was the salads category on one pub menu:

"Salads irreparable for eaters flowers."

PS: Blogs from the rest of the trip to come as I am able to transcribe them. This is tiring work!