Pragmatically Probing Prague

The following are some of my quick suggestions for Prague, on which I will elaborate in greater detail in other parts of this journal:

Looking at the shadowy statues on the Karlov Most (Charles Bridge) at dawn

Drinking golden pilsner in the dark Pivnice (pubs)

People watching (especially Americans) at an outdoor restaurant in the Staromestske Namesti (Old Town Square) over hot bowls of Czech soup

Searching for crystal vases and hand-painted eggs in stores hidden in the medieval streets

Craning your neck at the astronomical clock on the Staromestska Radnice (Old Town Hall) as you wait for the cock to crow

Crouching through the Lilliputian doorways of the bright and little homes in Zlata Ulicka (Golden Lane) in Hradcany (the Castle District).

Quick Tips:

My quick suggestions are as follows:

Eat and drink as much as possible; the food, beer, and wine are amazingly cheap and, in my opinion, very good.

Stay away from taxis as they are the only overpriced thing in the whole town. The subway system is very good and much of the city can be covered on foot.

Bring good shoes, as there are plenty of cobblestones to cover.

Best Way To Get Around:

Do not use taxis; instead use the subway and your own two feet.

Everything was pretty wonderful at this hotel after spending the previous night at the Bona Serva (see journal entry). The hotel building itself began in the 13th Century when its was an "overnight resting place" called "The White Lion." Emperor Josef II stayed here in the 17th Century and the name of the building was changed to the "City of Vienna." According to the hotel brochure, the hotel became a "notorious establishment" in the late 19th Century; I am guessing that it was then a brothel. The hotel today still has a Baroque white facade embellished with plaster work over the windows.

Hotel Meteor is located near the Powder Tower (Prasna Brana), which is the old city gate. It is very close to the Namesti Republicky subway stop and one of Prague's train stations (Masarykovo nadrazi). Its greatest attribute, however, is that you can walk to Wenceslas Square and the Old Town Square in about five minutes.

The rooms are very modern with air-conditioning and television (CNN and BBC). The restaurant below seems to be very nice. It is an old wine cellar from the 14th Century with a curved stone ceiling. We only were able to have the breakfast, which was included in the price of the room. It was an American style breakfast buffet, containing every type of breakfast food that you could ask for. It was a wonderful break after having the typical breakfast of cheese, meat, and bread for the last ten mornings.

My only complaint about the hotel was the snobby attitude of the woman at the front desk. My wife and I came into the lobby unshowered and looking a bit disheveled after taking a long and hot walk from our previous accomodations. My wife asked if they had any rooms and the lady impatiently replied, "This is an expensive hotel." She was much nicer to us after we checked in and gave her our credit card, but I thought she had a lot of nerve to treat us as if we couldn't afford their hotel!

The phrase "You get what you pay for" seems to apply here. My wife booked this place online, patting herself on the back for finding such affordable accomodations.

We arrived at the hotel and were immediately disappointed. We were in a mostly residential neighborhood, Zizkov, which was far away from the main sights. We later found that it was a substanital walk to get even to the subway. This little neighborhood was also very depressing in a Communist-influenced way, which is unlike the principal parts of the city. Adding to the displeasure of the hotel is the fact that it is painted a rather unappealing pink.

The chambers resembled rooms that would be found in an office park -- white, undecorated walls and blue industrial carpet. No television, no air-conditioning, nothing comfortable or redeeming about the beds. All this said, this accomodation would be perfect for students and those on a tight budget, it is clean and the rooms are private. Our problem is that we were looking for something nicer.

We ended up leaving the next morning after having an exasperating argument with the hotel owner about our bill. She was charging us a different price than she said on the internet. The difference was not substantial, but there was a principle involved here. We ended up paying her trumped up rate, but left a night earlier than we said we would.

My guide book told me of a restaurant in the Prague suburb of Smichov that was decorated with paraphenalia from the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team. Since we were living in Pittsburgh at the time and since we are both Penguins fans, we decided that it would be a fun journey to walk to the restaurant. We crossed the Vltava at the Charles Bridge and continued to walk a promenade along the bank of the river for about a half an hour. We finally came upon the restaurant at about seven at night. The outside of the restaurant has an oversized penguin with a bow tie hanging next to the window.

We went in and were suprised at how chic the restaurant was; it was not a sports bar as I had thought. Around the restaurant were pictures of the Czech All Star, Jaromir Jagr. The were sticks, pucks, jerseys, and posters all devoted to Pittsburgh's last champion. In spite of this, the restaurant was full of marble and dark wood -- surprisingly hip.

We ordered cabbage soup and onion soup with cheese (so delicious). For entrees, Toni had roast beef with dumplings in gravy and I had a Moravian platter containing duck, pork, beef, potato pancakes, dumplings, sauerkraut, and red cabbage. We downed a couple of Pilsners throughout the meal. The total for the food and beer for two was about $15. That is an amazing price when you consider the size and quality of food the was served to us.

The service was impeccable, especially since we were the only people in the restaurant. Toni spilled gravy on herself (not surprising since her entree contained roughly a gallon of gravy placed on a flat plate) and the waitress immediately brought over club soda and a napkin. The staff didn't speak English at all and had no idea that we were from Pittsburgh despite my attempts to explain.

This pivnice has a medieval execution theme. All around the pub are silver-bladed axes that were certainly made for lopping off the heads of unfortunate miscreants. Other devices of tortures and/or maiming are mounted on the walls. All this creates an atmosphere for serious beer-drinking and by early afternoon the long tables and benches were full of locals and tourists tilting their wrist in the name of execution. This pub apparently has been in existence since at least the 17th century, when the local executioner and his entourage came here to forget about their bloody work.

We sampled a couple tasty pilsners while there. We were astonished and pleasantly pleased that the practice of this pub is to present you with a beer the immediate moment you are seated. When you finish, another beer is presented. It took a couple of rounds for us to understand that they do this until you say no. We did not sample any of the bar food that we saw being served because we weren't sure what it was.

This place is located right in the Old Town Square. Usually I go out of my way to eat at places that are far away from the major sights; my theory is usually correct as many of the restaurants near top sights are tourist traps offering bad food, indifferent service, and high prices. We were so taken with the square, however, that we decided to sit and have a drink at least in the outdoor seating. We ordered beers and noticed that the food being served around us looked pretty good. We both ordered soup, the Czech specialty. Toni had a garlic soup and I had a cabbage soup. I currently rank these as numbers one and two on my all time greatest soup list.

We had to come back later at night and have a real dinner. We drank more pivo (beer) and dined on more cabbage soup and goulash with bacon. We also had some dumplings and mashed new potatoes to ensure that we had the proper amount of starch to complement our meal.

Like most Czech restaurants, you are charged for each piece of bread you eat and there is a cover charge for sitting outside. This will not upset you since you can eat heartily with beer for around $10 a person.

We had just arrived in Prague and had squared away our accomodations. We walked to the first important landmark that we came across, the Powder Tower, which is one of the old gates into the city. At the Powder Tower, we found two things that we had urgently been searching for:

cheap, fast food (a hot dog stand), and
a half day sightseeing tour to help us become acquainted with a city so full of sights.

After eating the second best hot dog I've ever had (Vienna is number one), we went and booked our excursion with Martin Tours , which operates many bus excursions in Prague and nearby Czech towns. The cost is about $16.00 dollars per person for a comprenhensive three and half hour tour.

I feel strongly that the most pragmatic way to see a large city is to take a city bus tour first. This tour is given from a covered bus with large windows so that you can see everything. This is not one of those tours where you put on headsets and listen to a canned speech about different sights as you go by. We had a tour guide that was giving the tour in three different languages from a 1970's style microphone in the front of the bus. Our tour guide did not speak English very well and was very hard to understand. She was sometimes speaking of something in English well after we had passed the sight that she was describing. I followed along, however, using a route map with English translation that they had provided.

The tour went through the Old Town Square, Wenceslas Square, the Castle District,New Town, Lesser Town, and Josefov. The tour ends back in the Old Town Square with a shamelessly forced visit to the "Bohemian Glass Museum" with attached overpriced shop.

My only complaint about the tour is that our guide's grasp of English was not very good.

Going to the Charles Bridge with a view to shop is a bit like going to T.J. Maxx looking for some nice clothes: You know that there are some nice things there somewhere, but you have to comb your way through so much undesireable merchandise and so many other people that it is a bit trying. On any given day in the summer, the bridge (aside from the tourist crush) is full of buskers and street musicians(some good, some downright untalented), cheap jewelry hawkers (we didn't look at their wares closely), people selling glass (again we weren't interested), and an eclectic array of painters and artists.

The painters and artists encompassed a wide range of styles and ability. Many of their works were a bit trite for the situation, such as pen and inks of the bridge and watercolors of the Castle District. Many of the artists were pretty laid back and seemed not to be too happy to have to peddle their work to the camera-toting fannypack crowd.

We fortunately came upon an artist who stood out from the rest. His work was all photography; a lot of black and white pictures of random cobblestone alleys or dark statues from a park. We found four such photos that suited us; these were actually taken with a blue-tinted lens, which lent a bit a color to the dark shots of stone and shadow.

Our vendor/artist wrapped our photos in a protective case and we paid some outrageously cheap sum (I apologize for forgetting this detail, but I assure you it was a deal).

Although the stone figures on the Charles Bridge never change their stoic poses, the mood on the bridge changes as frequently as a chameleon in a Crayola factory.

At dawn, the bridge is eerily silent. The touristic multitudes are still in their hotels nursing pilsener hangovers or else gorging themselves on their hotel's breakfast spread. The people that make their living on the bridge are methodically setting up shop; they are opening blankets on which to place their wares or setting up easels to show their art. The river gurgles beneath and sometime creates a fog which winds its way around the statues, often half obscuring their visages. This is the best time, in my opinion to see the bridge.

After the sun has offically made its appearance and now hangs high in the sky, the tourists enter. Beware of the following:

Americans with camcorders and fannypacks

Hordes of adolescents with matching orange backpacks traveling in a group of no less than fifty

Pickpockets and thieves looking for wallets and fannypacks

Aggressive vendors trying to sell you something that you could never hope to want or need.

As you may have already guessed, this is the worst time to go to the bridge, although it certainly was an experience.

At sundown the statues are as creepily silhouetted as they were in the morning. From the bridge, you can watch the sun set over Prague, as it lends pastel life to the surrounding shadow and stone. The vendors have packed up and left, but now the youth of Prague have taken over. They are sitting on the cobblestone on the bridge, consuming tobacco and beer in healthy amounts. At different spots on the bridge are various groups, usually singing or dancing along to guitar or drums or both. This is also a nice time to go to the bridge, if only to say, "I would have hung out here if I were younger."

Quick historical facts about the bridge:

It is named after the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, who appointed a German, Peter Parler, to build an effective bridge across the Vltava in 1357.

There are 30 statues of Baroque saints adorning the bridge, but most of these are recreations (The originals had to be removed to be protected from the elements).

The eighth statue on the right (coming from the Old Town side) is Jan Nepomunk, who was thrown off the bridge by King Wenceslas IV, for failing to betray Queen Sofie. It is the oldest statue remaining, designed in 1683.