After my stupidly late night / early morning I had to force my eyes open at 9:45 to check out of the hostel and move all my stuff to a hotel a 15 minute walk away. Viv, a friend of mine from back home, was having a weekend in Prague as a break from life’s daily grind and we’d opted on sharing a hotel to keep the costs down and to make things a little nicer for her. After all, this was a holiday!

The new place was quite nice but the evils of free internet meant that I didn’t get a nice 2-hour nap as I’d planned. Instead I replied to mails, got depressed with the news back home and walked down to KFC on the corner to console myself with a Zinger menu. I then jumped onto a Metro, transferred to a bus and arrived at the airport to catch Viv arriving on her (early, amazingly) flight.

As ever, it’s good to see a friendly face from back home and we sat and plotted the conquest of Prague with the guide books she’d brought with her. A quick stopoff at the hotel to drop her bags, and off into the sunshine for an explore.

Between my hostel and the hotel is a brick structure being built for charity. It’s 1000 Crowns per brick, and you can draw or paint anything you like on it. I vaguelly recall this just starting when I was in Prague a couple of years ago. There are now three or four structures, one double-layered, with many crazy designs on. Superb idea.

Picking a street at random – or so Viv led me to believe – we ended up walking past and then into the Sex Machines Museum. I swear she had this planned. As it happens, Talia had begged me to go there and get photos of the corsets they have on display so I grudgingly agreed to walk around (ahem) and we spent a little over an hour in a fairly enjoyable walk, giggling like schoolkids at some of the items on display. I think Viv walked off with a silly number of ideas and a mentally dwindling bank balance for when she got home.

The aim of the weekend for Viv was to relax, so we just took a stroll over the beautiful Charles Bridge in the baking sun and around the Old Town Square. A huge crowd had gathered around the Meteorological Clock to watch the figuers pop out on the hour and we joined them.

We pretty much spent the afternoon walking around admiring how beautiful a city Prague is. Everything’s so clean, but also now quite expensive. I swear things are pricier than they were when I visited for Colin’s stag party.

We picked a nice-ish restaurant for dinner and sat watching the passing people. Ice cream and a baked pastry doughnut kind of thing were munched as we walked around. Prague changes “tone” later at night as the more risque nightclubs open up. Stag parties trailed from one to the other as I was – for once – roundly ignored by the scary men trying to convince lone males that they really really wanted to part with a huge sum of money for one beer and a semi-naked wrinkly woman gyrating on their lap. It’s handy have a nice lady with you so you look like a couple!

Amazingly, despite the silly lack of sleep the night before, I made it to 1:30am before the need to sleep crept up and coshed me violently over the back of the head. I’ll get him for that. Ow.