Category: Travel Planning: What to Do

Czech Republic is landlocked right at the heart of continental Europe. It is surrounded by Austria, Germany and Poland, which is why the traditional food consists of a lot of meat and sauces. The most common meat is vepřové, or pork, and it is always served with knedlíky, or what they call dumplings, to soak up the gravy. All dishes almost always come with zelí or sauerkraut.

Meats are often roasted or baked. We were lucky enough to enjoy a plate of rožnÄ›né selátko, or grilled piglet. Thankfully, it came with a serving of vegetable salad. When we were hungry–which was more often than you can ever imagine–we ordered the combo plate of pork, Å¡pekové or duck, and sausages.

For a more homey meal, meat is stewed for hours to make goulash. We tasted a delicious one in thick sauce that used dark ale.

Game is usually served on special occasions. We had rabbit in sauce flavored with thyme and ostrich meat served with pasta. The rabbit was nice, but the ostrich just tasted like tough beef.

We even had baby octopus carpaccio served with arugula greens and drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice. We rarely had dessert but we spoiled ourselves with strudels and other pastries for breakfast or as snacks during the day.

Now all that food needs to go down, and if the Czechs are known for anything, it’s the way they appreciate their pivo, their beer. Pilsner, the most famous Czech beer, originated in Bohemia, a region in central Europe which occupies the western and middle thirds of Czech Republic. Pilsner was first brewed in a town called Plzeň and the same brewery that developed it still makes Plzňské or what we know as Pilsner Urquell.

Another famous Czech beer is České Budějovice or Budweiser Budvar. Budvar and Anheuser-Busch are still engaged in numerous trademark lawsuits around the world.

Each pub is supplied by only one brewery, or pivovar, but different types are usually available. No Czech beer lover ever drinks it canned as it is usually made for export. (Something I learned in Ireland and their Guinness.) Together with Plzňské from Plzeň comes Gambrinus.

Prague has its own, Staropramen, and there is also Krušovice Light from Královský.

All of the above are light and golden in color; foamy and refreshing at the end. I liked them fine, but my favorites were the dark lagers, Velkopopovický Kozel and U Fleků’s own tmavé brew.

If you can’t make up your mind, there is a combination of light and dark called Rezane, also from Velkopopovický. If you want the more familiar, of course there’s always the Belgian Stella.

When you enter a pub, you’re given a small piece of paper so that the waiter can tally your order. It’s a given that you’re going to drink beer, no matter what time it is. Beer will just keep coming to your table until you say something to your server otherwise.

We drank nine different kinds of beers each in three days! Not to mention the multiple quantities we drank of each kind. Just thinking of that feat deserves another beer!

Related post/s:
Prague photos on Flickr
Day 3: Astronomical Clock, Havel Market, Jewish Quarter, Charles Bridge
Day 2: Prague Castle, Lvi Dvur, Petrin Hill, Wenceslas Square
Day 1: Three Kinds of Beer, First Few Hours in Prague

The sun was out our last day in Prague. We took the tram to Old Town and walked a bit to get to the square. The tourists were already gathered in front of the astronomical clock, so we joined them and sat at one of the outdoor chairs of U Orloje for morning coffee. We just missed the 11:00 strike so we decided to walk around the neighborhood and catch the clock “show” later. We found Odkolek Bakery on Rytirska street where we bought a couple of turnover pastries to eat. The Havel market was already set up. We walked around and checked out the souvenirs and fresh produce for sale. I bought the mandatory magnet for Anna and the Pilsner Urquell bottle opener for myself.

We hurried back to the square just in time for the clock to strike the hour. The skeleton to the right tipped the hourglass and pulled a rope. The windows above the clock then opened and the twelve apostles did their procession thing. The other figures, Greed, Vanity and a Turk, all moved after the cock crowed.

The astronomical clock imitates the orbit of the sun and the moon about the Earth as well as show the visible parts of the sky in the summer and winter months. All that information and we still had to look at the more normal-looking clock at the top of the tower to tell time! We were glad to have seen it. We felt like it was one of those things that made a Prague visit complete.

We deserved a beer after standing under the sun to watch the clock. Cameron wanted to go to U Dvou Koĉek, which means Two Cats, to eat in honor of the two cats she left at home. We ate brewery cheese with paprika, black pepper sausage, ghoulash with bacon dumplings and a roasted pig’s neck. Henners and Sam would have been proud. We washed all the food down with Pilsner Urquell.

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the Jewish Quarter. The neighborhood went through an Art Nouveau revival and the buildings all looked new and beautiful. We walked by several synagogues before we paid to enter the Old Jewish Cemetery. Because it was the only area permitted to Jews back in the day, people had to be buried on top of each other, up to twelve layers deep. There are apparently twelve thousand gravestones crammed in there but over one hundred thousand are actually buried! It was definitely more crowded than a New York City subway.

Back in Old Town, it was Cameron time. We bought tickets to see Mozart’s Don Giovanni performed by marionettes. I wouldn’t have thought about watching a bunch of wooden toys move while singing arias, but the marionette shows have a long tradition throughout Czech Republic. I’ll have nightmares about moving toys now, but it was fun to watch and I would so recommend it if you’re visiting.

Before the sun set, we walked around Old Town Square some more to buy stuff to bring back to the States. We found La Vinotheque where we bought several bottles of Czech reds. We stopped by the Franz Kafka bookstore to add to my Catcher in the Rye translations collection.

When we finally made it to Charles Bridge, the sky was beautifully painted with orange and purple and the Vltava River was calm. We couldn’t help but take photos even though it was the most clichéd setting ever.

Of course, that deserved a beer. We tried the Budvar at a pub off the Little Quarter, the real Budweiser before Anheuser-Busch stole the name. (The two companies have been duking it out in court for hundreds of years.) For our last dinner in Prague, we splurged at U Tří Pštrosů, or At The Three Ostriches, where we shared the game consommé, the foie gras, the coquille and the veal terrine with the ostrich steaks.

Our last couple of hours in Prague were spent inhaling everything. We had to be at the airport at 5:30am the next day to catch our flight to Heathrow before heading back to New York City. We took in all the lights, the bricks, the buildings and the streets and said Děkuji, Praha!

Related post/s:
Prague photos on Flickr
Day 2: Prague Castle, Lvi Dvur, Petrin Hill, Wenceslas Square
Day 1: Three Kinds of Beer, First Few Hours in Prague

We woke up fairly early the next morning even though we’ve only had a few hours of sleep. It was our first full day in Prague and we wanted to hit a lot of the spots on our list. Our hotel was right next to a highway but we were surprised we didn’t hear the cars driving by throughout the night. We bought coffee at the Illy shop in front of the tram stop and decided that we have to head towards the Prague Castle in order to eat a decent breakfast because most of the restaurants in our area were still closed.

Up on one of the hills towards the Castle, we stopped by Restaurant V Podhradí for ham and eggs, as well as an omelet with our second cup of coffee. It started to rain and continued to during our entire time at the Castle. We paid for ticket B to be able to get in St. Vitus’s Cathedral, the Daliborka prison tower and walk along Golden Lane. There was much pushing and shoving to get inside the church. It must have been below zero in there, colder than it was outside.

After a couple of hours, we took the tram to Lví dvůr, a restaurant I wrote down after reading about their specialty: roasted pig. We started with the baby octopus carpaccio before we ordered the piglet. We washed everything down with Krusonice beer. It was probably our simplest and yet best meal in Prague.

The rain let up a bit and we walked up Petrin Hill along the Hunger Wall to get a glimpse of the ugly Observation Tower, Prague’s mini version of the Eiffel. We reached the Strahov Monastery and paid the ridiculous 800 kronos fee to see the two libraries, Philosophical and Theological Halls. They asked us for an extra 50 kronos to take photographs, but I refused. They can keep their pretty libraries to themselves.

Down the hill and in between taking photos of Czech rooftops, we stopped by the Josef Sudek photo gallery, named after a famous Czech photographer, and checked out the Pavel Hrdliĉka photographs on display. On our way home, we saw a photo of Å vejk from the book I’m reading outside a bar and decided to get off the tram for a beer. It turned out to be U Å vejků and one of the pubs the writer Jaroslav HaÅ¡ek frequented.

We ran back to our hotel, changed to drier clothes and took the tram right back out again to make it to the State Opera. We were a few minutes late, so they sat us along the side box seats. During intermission, we were seated in our correct seats where we got a really nice view of the show. Everything was in Italian and the supertitles were in Czech, so our discussion of the opera afterwards went something like: So the sideburns guy was angry at the good looking soldier? But the purple sash dude was his friend, right? No, the purple sash guy is the sideburns guy! We got the gist of it though, because the lady killed herself after the fatty died. What’s an opera without the main characters dying in the end?

Finding dinner was a challenge after 10:30pm. We refused to eat spaghetti in a pub or at any of the fast foods shacks around the more touristy area of Wenceslas Square. We even found a restaurant with a caveman theme–we just couldn’t get ourselves to do it. Restaurant Boheme to the rescue. There was a lonely man playing the piano in the middle of the room. He would have been delightful if only we weren’t seated next to an American tourist who looked like Michael Bolton with a fanny pack. He kept looking at us to strike up a conversation and he slurped his wine to give us an inkling that he knew how to “taste” wine. It was probably the fastest meal we’ve ever had in our lives. We scarfed down a plate of ghoulash in dark beer and roasted rabbit to avoid any more eye contact with him. At least he gave us a story to laugh about.

Back in Smichov, we found Jet Set, a techno-theme bar in front of where they were playing the movies for the Febio Fest. We had a Stella nightcap, the only beer they had on tap. People were coming out of the theaters across the way. It was too bad that there weren’t anymore hotdog stands around. We went back to our hotel, passed out and waited for our last full day in Prague.

Related post/s:
Day 1: Three Kinds of Beer, First Few Hours in Prague

After a beer with our artichoke chicken salad from Snack at the airport bar, Cameron and I boarded our flight to Prague. We watched Pride and Prejudice on the plane instead of getting much-needed sleep (it was good but no one beats Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy) that by the time we reached Zurich to transfer, we were too tired to appreciate the fact that we were in Switzerland. A small sandwich tied us over until we landed in Prague.

Outside the RuzynÄ› airport, we waited for the #100 bus which connected to the yellow metro near our Ibis hotel in Smichov. It felt good to get some fresh air that we didn’t mind the wait. We initially planned to catch the #119 but realized that we didn’t have to go to the city center to take the yellow. At the Andel station, we were welcomed by a crowd of Czechs milling around the shopping mall and waiting for the tram. We asked a lady inside one of the cosmetic stores to direct us to our hotel. She pointed to the sign down the block and we finally checked in.

Our hotel was just right. It wasn’t anything special, but it was so clean that we didn’t mind the two exact towels provided for us everyday. We settled in for a few minutes and decided to start our first day in Prague by taking care of business: buy opera tickets for the next day’s show. We took the yellow line to Muztek, transfered to the green and got off at Muzeum. We jaywalked to get to the other side of the highway off Wenceslas Square and bought tickets for Verdi’s Les Vêpres Siciliennes before the box office closed. With that taken care of, our second order of business was to get our first meal and first pint. We walked down the path of the National Museum and found Café Svatého Vaclava right before it started to drizzle.

Our first Kozel beer was priceless. We also ordered the potato soup and a big plate of pork and duck meat plus sausages served with red and white cabbage. It was already dark when we finished so we decided to walk to U Fleků and experience the traditional Czech pub feel. U Fleků is one of Prague’s oldest pubs and will remain to be one of my favorite pubs while in the country. We sat down with strangers on a long wooden table, listened to the two musicians playing the accordion and the tuba while we inhaled everyone’s smoke and tried to get any of the waiters’ attention.

The European tourists in front of us helped us order two pints. We finally got a piece of paper which allowed us to reorder every time one of the servers walked by with a tray of dark beer. A line is marked on our paper every time we nod for a refill. Another waiter also carried a tray of Becherovka shots. Cameron wondered, What do you think those are? I didn’t know, so I signaled for the waiter to give us two. It had a cinnamon-y taste to it.

We had another beer before we stepped out to walk around Little Quarter and to Charles Bridge, the most popular bridge in Prague. We joined throngs of people walking in the dark and crossing over to the Old Town side. We bought a hot dog from the corner store. When we reached Old Town, we noticed a small alley under the bridge. We were so tired but decided to check out the pub anyway. We ended up at U Karlova Mostu for some moucnicky or dessert. We ordered the liskooriskova minibabovka s vanilkovou zmrzlihou v cokoladove kruste, also known as hazelnut cake with ice cream in chocolate crust. What better way to wash down a dessert with a bunch of consonants than with a mix of dark and light beer: Rezane.

We walked to the #12 tram back to Andel and walked back to our hotel. Not even twenty-four hours in Czech Republic and we’ve experienced so much already. Three kinds of beer, at least.