Beautiful Prague and a run in with the cops

This city gets prettier as the weather gets nicer.

Today has been a gorgeous day. We decided to go out to Petrin Hill. A hill in Prague that has an imitation Eiffel Tower at the top. On the way up the hill the views of the city just get better and better. Especially today, the skies were clear so we could see a lot farther than on all those cloudy, hazey days we get. Then we hiked up 299 stairs to the top of the tower. The tower itself isn't that tall, but since its on the hill the views of the city are great. There is also a mirror labrynth up on the hill. It was pretty cool and there was a section that had distorted mirrors that we had a laugh at - no matter how old I am, those mirrors seem to get me every time! They're hilarious. There's also a wall that runs up this hill. It's called the "Hunger Wall", because it was basically commissioned by Charles IV to be built to give the starving citizens work for food.

Then we meandered down the hill and made our way towars old town square. In old town square there is a lot going on for easter. There's a stage set up, but they weren't doing anything on it at the time. There are tons and tons of booths set up with gifts and yummy food. On the way to Old Town Square, we ran into the United States Embassy. I really had no idea where it was, so I guess it was a good thing to find (even though we've nearly been here 2 months now). Woops - I think that is one of the first things you are supposed to do when staying in a country for awhile - find the Embassy. Anyhow, we know where its at now.

These last few days, I've just been doing some school work, planning future trips, and hanging out. Since its been so much nicer here, I've been able to do some running outside, which is SO nice. It's fun to do here since you can explore as you run. The other day we went and bought our train tickets to Berlin. We're going next weekend -over Easter weekend. We get Monday after Easter off of school and we don't have classes on Fridays. Its only a 4 1/2 hour train ride - not too bad. The only other train ride I've been on is to Poland and that was almost 10 hours!

There has been one funny story lately... Tuesday night we all went out to a club. The international students from University of Economy were having their weekly presentation and we're always welcome to those. We went and ended up taking a taxi home because it was the most convenient. This was my first taxi ride in Prague. They tell people not to take them, because they like rip off tourists. We asked before hand what it would be, so there were no surprises there. He ended up dropping us a bit of a distance from the actual dorm, but it was easier to get out than try to explain. So we started walking back to the dorm, when we passed a street that had a trash can ablaze with fire down it. We were a little shocked - this definitely isn't a normal happening. So we laughed, saw some police officers racing down the street in their car, and walked on. The police car whipped onto the street with the fire and disappeared from our view, then we heard it coming back around the corner and drove up next to us and stopped. The cop got out and started speaking czech. We had to tell him we speak English, so he looked at our i.d.'s as we tried to explain we didn't know what the fire was all about. I have no idea if he understood us, but waved us off eventually.

Well, that's all for now!