Northern Bohemia

This weekend my program took a trip to Northern Bohemia, in the northern Czech Republic. On Friday we went to a wine tasting and a castle. We tasted 6 different wines, all made in Northern Bohemia. Most of them were really good. I enjoyed the white wine more than the red wine. I found the red wines (there were 2 of them that we tried) to be bitter.

After the wine tasting we went to a castle nearby. The castle was very interesting to see though not as lavish as I was expecting. The detailing on the walls, trim, and ceilings is incredible.

Friday night we stayed in a hotel. I roomed with Molly. A bunch of us had a few drinks at the bar in the hotel before going to Disco Oko, the local disco. Most of our program went to the disco and I met a lot of new people from our program. It was great. The disco was VERY European. There was lots of techno and we danced all night.

Saturday we went to a glass blowing factory. We learned about and saw the process of how glass is made. The factory was very interesting, not the nicest working conditions, but the process is intricate and the glass was beautiful. The factory makes all custom pieces. After this we took a bus ride for another hour to a mountainous area. We hiked up the mountain to the top where we saw a famous broadcasting building. The building is positioned at the top of the mountain in a circular format. It is no longer used as a broadcasting building and has since been turned into a hotel/ monument/ restaurant. The hike up was beautiful. We were able to see out over the city. It was also interesting that certain sides of the mountain had snow and some skiing while other sides were pure greenery. We all sat down to relax and have some coffee in the broadcast building before heading back down.

After the hike we had some time to spend in town. A bunch of us went to eat. We split the bill and were too lazy to split the change. Lucky for us there was a casino next to the restaurant. We decided to put all the of change on red on the roulette table. It was a spontaneous move but we went with it. We won the first roll and became loud boisterous Americans. We decided to flip a coin to decide which color for the second roll. We won 2 rolls, lost, 1, and won the last roll. We cashed out our 2000 crown (about $100) and went to the bar to celebrate! It was a ton of fun and truly an amazing day.

On Sunday we went to another Castle. This castle was one of the most unbelievable places I've ever seen. From the outside you would never know it was a castle. On the inside it had the most exquisite decorations and detailing. We weren't allowed to take pictures, so I have very few (my friend Mike would sneak a couple pictures when he thought no one was looking so I've stolen his pictures).

Sunday afternoon we came back to Prague and all crashed around our flat, did some homework, and got ready for the week.

That's about it for now. Talk soon!

Lisa