prague, day 2

Man, today was a good day. We were going to wake up and hit the Prague castle before 9 am... but when we woke up it was 11. And hooray for sleeping in! In the most comfortable bed ever!So we slowly made our way out the door for brunch (crepes filled with mushrooms, onions, turkey and bacon) and then meandered over to the Jewish Quarter. Here we explored several synagogues, but the most fascinating part by far was the cemetery. In the 15th to 18th century, Jews were not allowed to live or buy land outside of the Jewish quarter. This meant that they had to put everyone in the same cemetery. It's against their religion to desecrate a grave in any way, so they would simply cover existing graves with more soil, and rebury the dead on top of other graves. But they would lift out the old tombstone and then put them next to each other. So what you ended up with was a sort of "hill" with all of these ancient tombstones. It was fascinating (and depressing), to say the least.After that, we grabbed a wonderful lunch at what we thought was a coffee shop but after eating there, we're pretty sure it was a gay bar. Or a gay coffee shop. Or whatever -- we're open. It's just funny how in Europe you stumble into the most unexpected places because you don't speak the language. Anyway, the servers were all extremely attractive (of course), the food was amazing (of course) and we had a marvelous time.Next we headed back to the Old Town Square because I wanted to climb to the top of the clock tower and take photos of Prague (see one of the images above). It was a lovely evening, and the views were fantastic. And then we walked around some more and then it was time for dinner!Man, vacations rule.So next we found this restaurant that was in a dungeon basement that was from the 12th century! It was the greatest atmosphere. Lots of tiny rooms with stone cellar walls and arched doorways and candlelight. We opted for a traditional Czech dinner and I had Goulash with dumplings and Jamie had some sort of chicken in paprika gravy with dumplings. The stew was great, as were the dumplings, but the meat was cooked too tough for our taste. Anyway, the atmosphere more than made up for it, and it was very reasonably priced.After dinner, we (finally) made it to Vzorkouna, which was a bar that Astronautalis had insisted we visit. He was not wrong. It was a complete dive and totally wonderful. There was a band on stage (stand-up bass, guitar and accordion) with a beautiful blonde singer who performed songs in Czech, French and English. It was an amazing performance and the beer was cheap. A wonderful end to the day.Tomorrow is our last day in Prague before we hop on the overnight train to Krakow. To see the rest of today's photos (including the graveyard) look over here.