We left our apartment after a last breakfast and clean-up before 8 am with plenty of time to spare to catch our train at 9:10, and it was a good thing we did, because one of our subways had quite a lot of delay. But we still had time to grab some extra water for the train, and by 9:30, we were back on a train, with reserved seats and plenty of space for luggage. Vienna is quite close to the Czech border, and within a half an hour we had crossed the border and could see the lovely rolling countryside of Moravia with its mix of grain fields and forests as we passed Brno (Brünn) and got to Prague with just a tiny bit of delay around 2 pm.
Our Airbnb was only 15 minutes on foot from the train station, so we made our way there over plenty of cobble stones, and after a bit of confusion about dual street numbers (one red, one blue, for totally different administrative purposes), we found our lock box and then our apartment, which is in a building from the 1950s in an inner courtyard (“pure socialism,” as Peter said), even though the street it is on is lined with beautiful old façades, including some gorgeous art nouveau apartment buildings. It is very centrally located (10 minutes from the old city center, and about the same from the famous King Charles Bridge), but is roomy like the one in Vienna, has good options for a cross-breeze and even a few small fans! We settled in, inspected the marginal mini fridge and decided that if we want meals beyond breakfast, we have to buy them on the spot. Also, we’ll be limited to instant coffee because there is no coffee maker. But we went for a quick walk to the nearest grocery store (4 minutes away) and got everything for our breakfast and some Czech wafers that looked very pretty but turned out to taste like the super cheap crunchy ice cream cones you get with soft-serve. Oh well.
We only took a short break before we headed back out, because we just could not wait to see more of the city, especially the unbelievable art nouveau architecture. The medieval and Renaissance part, with its crooked alleys and the big plaza with the town hall, the famous astrological clock, and the many, many tourists, was also fun, but also very crowded, and ultimately our eyes were always drawn more to the art nouveau and also some fantastic art deco shops that survived the war and the entire postwar period intact only to be spiffed up for fancy new stores after the end of the Cold War. But we dutifully visited the main square and the streets that run from there to the King Charles Bridge. But the bridge was so crowded and sunny that we decided to postpone walking across until tomorrow morning (the light will be better then for Andrea and Mark’s photographs).
Instead, we found our way back into the more modern part of the downtown area and found a very nice brew pub/beer garden where we could sit outside with the hum of happy people eating, drinking, and talking, with Czech lager and ice tea, and some excellent samples of relatively reasonable Czech food–we sampled several kinds of dumplings (bread and potato) and meat (goulash, schnitzel, roast leg of duck, and cold beef roast with horseradish) and were quite happy with all of it.
Then we slowly wended our way home, still gawking everywhere at the surprise mix of art nouveau façades, art deco stores, severe 18th century neoclassical buildings, baroque churches, hypermodern chain stores you find all over Europe, and the occasional dilapidated, neglected building that still resembles what everything looked like when Andrea was here in 1984, on her 12th grade week-long field trip, at the tail end of the Cold War. At the end of our own street, on Jungmann plaza, we found a fantastic gelato place that apparently won some kind of TV contest (think the Great British Bake-Off but for gelato makers?) and spent a very happy fifteen minutes consuming our chosen flavors (a Sacher Torte-inspired chocolate ice cream was quite the hit, but I also liked my pistachio and creamy raspberry-lemon).
Then we REALLY went home, rested our feet, went through a round of photo editing and sorting like we do most nights, did some laundry, and crawled into bed after another full day around 10:30. Our bedrooms are catty-corner because the apartment wraps around one of the corners of the charmless courtyard between even rattier apartment buildings. But there’s ivy–and it actually cooled down to the lower 60s overnight, for a brief reprieve.
