Prague, Picturesque with Great Beer
Trip Start
Sep 04, 2007
1
19
23
Trip End
Oct 26, 2007
Prague,
Czech Republic
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
It was late in the afternoon by the time we left our apartment and begin our tour of Prague. We headed for Stare Mesto (Old Town), which was a 20 minute walk. For us to get to Stare Mesto, we crossed Charles Bridge which was filled with tourist just like us. The bridge was lined with little stalls, portrait artists, performers and 30 18th Century statues towering over the bridge.
The Charles Bridge led us to Starmestske Nam which is Prague's Old Town Square. The town square complete with overpriced restaurants, cafes, souvenirs outlets specializing in Bohemia Crystal, ceramics, puppets and garnet jewellery
Charles Bridge
. The town square is known for housing Tyn Church, St Nicholas Church and what's a town square without a clock tower? The clock tower also has an astronomical clock, where the bells ring every hour. What else is the Czech Republic for?? BEER...nice and cheap beer! The Lonely Planet recommended a traditional Prague beer hall called Kolkovna. The beer hall is owned by the Pilsner Urquell brewery (one of their most famous brands), so we had to try the pilsner, complemented with traditional Czech food. There was no point in even considering drinking anything other than beer. The beer (0.5L) was cheaper than soft drink and water and only cost around $2AUD.
The next day we ventured up the hill to Prague Castle to check out the biggest castle complex in the world. The castle was more like a small town which comprised of St Vitus Cathedral, the palace, museums and a beautiful garden (Garden on the Ramparts).
At the main entrance of the castle we watched one of the hourly changing of the guards, and then went inside St Vitus Cathedral which is flooded with beautiful stain glass windows and housed many tombs
Bel and I
. On the side of the cathedral we climbed 287 narrow, spiral, steep steps, this made it interesting when going up and down the tower, but it was worth the great views of the city. On one side of St Vitus' exterior is the "Golden Gate", which is a triple archway door topped by a 14th gold mosaic of the last judgment. On the way down the hill we stopped off at Mala Strana (Little Quarter), built in the 17th and 18th century, in the back streets of the castle. When we hit the bottom of the hill we stopped off for a few beers at Malostranske Nam (another square in Mala Strana), known for its café crowds and nestled in between are small traditional beer halls. We thought the night before the beers were cheap, but found another pub which had 0.5L beers for $1.50AUD. After having a beer each, Belinda struggled to finish off her second, so she poured ¾ of her beer into my glass which ultimately made my glass full again. Soon after, our waiter walked past our table glanced at Belinda's glass, impressed and smiled in amazement picked up her empty glass, then ready to pick up mine and but realising I had still a full glass of beer, he gave this look of horror and disgust. You could almost read his thoughts at that point......."SOFT".
For dinner, we went to another traditional pub for more of the same
Beer
! The following two days were spent on catching up on domestic things and grazing around. We had a lot of washing to do and found a café/bar close by with washing machines, called "Wash Cafe". It was 10:30am and had a two hour wait for our washing to complete. We still had not had any breakfast and unfortunately their menu was only in Czech and the only thing we could understand was cappuccino and pivo (beer). We started off with a cappuccino each, the proceeded with beer. At the end of the two hour wait, we had a liquid breakfast of three beers each. Gotta love Prague, with all our drinks and the washing, it was still cheap, only costing us around $18AUD.
Finished with our chores, we headed out to Nove Mesto (New Town), which is really not new at all. This part of Prague still had many buildings from the 14th century, but most of this part housed the commercial shops, banks and restaurants.
If we did lose any weight during this trip (no chance), we probably put it all back on in the last four days, with the amount of food and more so the beer we've been drinking.
