The Grand Hotel Europa (formerly the Hotel Erzherzog Stefan)
The Klementinum/Church of St. Salvator, right across from the Charles Bridge (East side)
The Klementinum/Church of St. Salvator, right across from the Charles Bridge (East side)
The bride with the awesome footwear
The two towers on the other (West) end of Charles Bridge
A more distant view of the West side of the river
The gate between the two towers
The city on the West side
The gate at Charles Bridge again
Detail on one of the towers (injured baby dragon?)
Baroque trumpet demo in front of Church of St. Francis of Assisi
A Czech specialty we did not try (a baked thing that gets filled with cream but has no vowels)
The unbroken line of late 19th century houses along the Vltava
We were all packed by morning and out the door with a minimal breakfast and a picnic lunch for the bus by 8:30. This was my first-ever attempt at a cross-country bus ride, with a company called “FlixBus” that has become a very popular alternative to trains because they are ridiculously cheap and go to many key destinations non-stop–Munich to Prague cost us 15 Euro per person! We had a very pleasant 5-hour bus ride to Prague, in a bus with plugs, wifi, tray tables, and a clean bathroom, and we even moving from crappy weather to sunny skies in Prague! Arriving was a bit of an adventure, as we had to find our way to an ATM (different currency, the Czech Crown), get our 72-hour tickets for metro, tram, etc. (more expensive than in Munich at about $15 each), and find our way through the metro, to the (not connected) tram and our out-of-the way hostel, which was, however, a great find. We are close to two tram lines, it’s quiet, and while the room we have for the three of us is a bit shabby, it is clean and with its own shower (not a given for hostels), and although the wifi is limited, they also offer a 5 Euro breakfast that we’ll take advantage of on Saturday morning. All for 82 Euro for TWO days. Not bad.
We arrived at about 3:30, got our luggage dumped in the room and took a short break before venturing back into the city. I feel out of my waters because I have never been to Prague and don’t speak the language, so it’s very different for me than traveling in Germany. I tried to make myself baseline-tourist knowledgeable en route, and that gave me some idea, but getting off the beaten track is a little harder here! So we started out absolutely on the beaten track–we took the tram downtown, took note of where the Dvorak museum is, and walked to Wenceslas Square, where the Grand Hotel Europa with its Art Deco splendor and its slight Kafka connection (he read some of his stories) is certainly a memorable building in a city so chock-full of gorgeous Art Deco and late 19th century town houses that it’s hard to say anything is memorable. Having grown up in Germany with a lot of partially preserved, partially bombed and rebuilt city centers, I am completely blown away by the completeness of Prague’s Old and New Town and was just in awe the entire 3+ hours that we walked around. We walked from Wenceslas Square to the old town square, but we didn’t really spend much time there, because it was swarming with tourists, as expected, and had a big swirl of people on Segways in the middle. We followed the crowds along to the famous Charles Bridge and checked on the various churches and their concerts, with view to something Kai could go see tomorrow. Right across from the Charles Bride, they have daily concerts with organ and violin music in the Klementinum/St Salvator Church, and of organ and baroque music in the Church of St. Francis–two trumpeters actually gave samples every half hour. But for the day, we just found ourselves a tourist-trap restaurant in a beautiful location right along the river and had questionably authentic Czech food (which is very close to traditional Southern German food–cooked or roasted meat with generous doses of salty gravy over both bread dumplings and potato dumplings. Kai also tried some potato pancakes, and there were helpings of very sweet sauerkraut. The food wasn’t bad, but not nearly as good as I suspect it could be. We then found some gelato (popular here as in Germany, apparently) and then walked across the Charles Bridge, which has been there in one form or another since the 14th century and is now, thankfully, an exclusively pedestrian bridge. Along with hundreds of other tourists, we strolled across, looking at the statues along the way (of various saints and kings), as well as a few beggars, and listening to street musicians all along into the old town on the other end, where the swarms entered through a city gate between two bridge towers and dissipated. The crooked little streets, again with town houses, churches, and impressive-looking official buildings, were just fun to walk around in, and it seemed like around every corner, there were more beautifully restored buildings, with gorgeous stucco, wrought iron balconies and copper spires. Along the river on both sides, that’s pretty stunning. In addition, behind the West side of the Old town are the hills on which we could see Prague Castle from afar, so the city skyline on both banks of the river was fabulous in the evening light. It was a bit overwhelming and became a blur after a while, but Mark took many photos to choose from. We finally decided to go home; Kai was getting rather tired and wanted to be done with the day; Mark and I walked for a bit more after dropping him off at the hostel, just to check out our own mostly residential neighborhood. We did climb a nearby hill and again had a very nice view, and even here, North and East of the touristy part of town, the more modern and graffiti-covered buildings alternate with late Victorian / Art Deco surprises.