City of spies or city of con-artists?
With only a short time to spend in Prague (capital of Czech Republic) before winging our way to Dubai and home, it really is nothing more than a grab bag of Czech hot spots, beer and cheap souvenirs. Lets get the cheap stuff out of the way first. We’ve developed a flavour for cups this time round. I’m not talking about bone china here, these are your fair dinkum tea/coffee mugs. But they need to tell something about where they were bought and preferably they should be not made in China – although that sometimes can’t be helped. So TICK on that item. Some other things get ticked off like T-Shirts that say ‘Prague’, a really cool wicked witch that cackles when you clap your hands and a statue of ‘le infant’ for Jelly’s growing collection of religious icons – sitting on our dining room mantel.
The beer is good but not as cheap as Poland. About 50% more expensive I would say, but not any better. If you’re looking for good cheap beer then go to Poland. Regardless, its still 50% cheaper than the beer in Australia and that’s enough to make it easily affordable. We started out with Pilsner, in particular the Urquell Pilsner but then by chance moved to the darker stuff and liked it very much. I don’t think its a stout beer, but its dark, sweet and sticky. We enjoyed the discovery.
With sight seeing we didn’t cover a lot of ground. The beer and sunshine are a deadly combination and the attraction – in autumn – is to find a sunny spot in the old town square where the buskers gather and drink pivo (beer). Today we talked about how we are finally relaxing – after 4 weeks away from work! This holiday has probably been focused too much on the ‘must see’ items and we’ve learned that we should expect to see less next time and try to relax MORE! But I’m pretty certain we’ve come to this conclusion in the past. It’s all too easy sitting in Australia to plan the jump from this country to that but in reality those jumps chew up a whole day here and there. Precious time that could be spent relaxing in the sun instead of wasted hours in airports and trains stations! 🙂
I titled this post ‘c0n-artists’ but Prague doesn’t really have any more or less that the other cities we have visited. Probably more buskers doing their own thing here than elsewhere – which is great. The guy with the huge snake draped round his neck. The guys in Wenceslas square using their gear to blow gigantic soap balloons. The 5-10 different Segway tour groups constantly cruising round the old and newer parts of town, yet still charging ridiculous rates. And then of course the souvenir shops with their t-shirts, caps, fridge magnets and other gear. Its all on and the uninitiated will certainly get taken. We tend to get ‘taken’ as soon as we arrive…. anywhere. but wise up quickly and avoid future gafs (Jelly thinks I’m a real hard-ass on the taxi drivers and spruikers).
Have we seen it all? not by a long shot but in short we scored a nice hotel – with a very comfortable double bed – near the action and have covered the Wenceslas square and old town a few times now. there is a castle up on the hill that is apparently appealing to even the most jaded of travellers, but come on, I have seen so many castles and churches lately I just can’t come at it. I’m done with being charged $20 or $30 to make my way around this or that ancient artifact. And while I acknowledge the wealth of history here in Europe, what we’ve seen so far is probably too much eye candy for this poor Aussie – at least first time round.
Highlights of Prague? Well, at risk of sounding like a piss head. it was really nice to sit back and enjoy a beer in the old town. I don’t think we’ve staggered away from any venue in our entire time away, Prague included. But sitting in the sun and watching life – and fellow tourists – go by, has been very enjoyable. There is a church tower in the old town that cost us 100 Korona’s each and a half hour queue. Mr Gilbertson if you are reading this, the stair climb up was harrowing for us vertigo challenged souls, but the view at the top was magnificent and allowed us to see all of Prague. It really was amazing and well worth the time and money. But OMG hanging out the turret at the top to take Jelly’s photo… yikes!!!
Finishing off our 2 days in Prague – and almost the end of our time away – meant eating somewhere nice. the Radison hotel where we are staying have 2 restaurants, 1 of them is Michelin rated. We opted for the non-Michelin restaurant thinking they’d probably share the same kitchen. We went for a 4 course degustation with matching wines and it was a great treat. Degustation menus tend not to give you a great quantity of food but what you get is very rich and high quality cuisine. The richness of the food fills you up. Its a nice change from day to day and very tasty. At the end of our meal we were invited by the chef to visit the kitchen. its always great to see where the food is prepared and get hints about how they concoct this or that. I found the floor to be slippery in places and in general the environment was much hotter than I thought it would be but very clean. We also got to meet the Michelin Chef, Roman Paulus,and all in all it was a fantastic night. BTW we discovered that the Michelin kitchen is kept separate from the other 2 kitchens but regardless the meal was superb.
Tomorrow we leave Prague but for tonight we say thank you and look forward to visiting the Czech Republic again in the future.
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