Prague Republic Travel Articles & Travelogues

CZECH REPUBLIC TRAVEL ARTICLES

Prague - April/May 2002

We got slightly lost finding Karlin once we reached Prague, but eventually recognised a few landmarks and found the Hotel Ibis. We were given a very large room as on our previous visit. After checking in, we caught the Metro to Müstek and bought transport tickets for the week. They cost less than £5 each.

It was good to be back in Prague and we decided to visit our favourite café. It was a short walk to Café Slavia where I had pancakes with fruit, cream and ice cream and Norman had apple strudel. The coffee was as good as we remembered. Afterwards, we crossed the road to the National Theatre where we booked tickets for two ballet performances at the two main theatres. Then we walked along the river to Karlova Namesti and caught the Metro back to the hotel. We both agreed that we had forgotten just how many wonderful buildings there are everywhere in this beautiful city. Little did we imagine what devastation the floods were to cause later in the year.

We had dinner in a restaurant opposite the States Theatre, the Divadelni. I had potato soup followed by pork in Roquefort sauce with chips. Norman had beef and horseradish, followed by pike and chips. We both had beer and coffee and were quite impressed with the place, the food and the price. We enjoyed listening to the sixties pop music while we were eating! It was nice to return to the Old Town Square with its lovely illuminated buildings before returning to the hotel.

On Wednesday 1st May, we had breakfast in the hotel; it was not as good as we remembered and the dining room was very crowded. Last time we were in Prague, it was late November, grey and cold. This time, the weather was warm and sunny, so we caught the Metro to Nemesti Karlovi and arranged to take a boat trip down the river to Troja. While we were waiting we explored the area and discovered even more lovely buildings that had not yet been renovated, and then had coffee in the Fred and Ginger building, so-named because it looks like a dancing couple.

As soon as we boarded the boat, we realised we had made a big mistake by taking this trip on a public holiday. The vessel was filled with Czech families going to Prague Zoo. We managed to find seats, but we couldn’t really see very much during the trip. When we arrived, we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. We eventually jumped on a bus, which seemed to be going in the right direction. It took us to the end of the Metro line and we caught a train back into town.

By this time, we were ready for a snack at Slavia. I had the pancakes again and a glass of fresh orange juice, while Norman had the apple strudel and a Viennese coffee. We walked to Wenceslas Square to see if anything was happening there because of the holiday. All was quiet so we caught the Metro back to the hotel.

That evening we had a superb meal in the French restaurant at Obecni Dum. We decided on the gastronomic menu and were rewarded by a pâté taster, followed by pâté de foie gras with apple in a sour cherry sauce, mussel and shrimp mousse, coq au vin with grapes, and filet mignon of beef with creamed potatoes, small roast onions and asparagus. For dessert we had a sort of cappuccino rum baba with coffee ice cream, followed by coffee and petits fours, which we couldn’t eat! Norman had beer and I had mineral water with the meal. It was a really enjoyable dinner in beautiful surroundings.

After breakfast on Thursday, we took the Metro to Staromestská near Charles Bridge and Norman took some photographs. The weather was wonderful and it was great to see Prague in the sunshine, unlike our last visit when we had hardly seen the sun at all. Unfortunately, the batteries in the camera ran out and the film wouldn’t rewind. We took the Metro back to Museum and found a camera shop on Wenceslas Square. Norman replaced the batteries, but found the film hadn’t rewound fully and had probably been exposed. We took the Metro back across the river and went into the terraced gardens below the castle. There were far too many steps for my poor old knees so Norman went up by himself. He said the gardens were particularly boring but the views were very good, and the construction was interesting. Once again, the weather was glorious and it was really hot.
After coffee at a café, we returned to Charles Bridge to take photographs to replace the ones we thought we had lost. There were crowds of tourists with each group moving en masse. As soon as we could we cut down to the nice square below the bridge and then walked through the park and along the river to cross the river by another bridge before catching the Metro back to the hotel.

Armed with books to read, we went back to Café Slavia for Viennese coffee and pancakes with summer fruits and cream. On our way back, we got off the Metro at Florenc and called at the stamp shop. I bought several packets of stamps and then we walked back to the hotel.

We returned to the restaurant opposite the States Theatre for dinner. This time we both had veal in mushroom sauce with chips, accompanied by apple juice. Then Norman had apple strudel and I had crème caramel with fruit and cream followed by espresso. It wasn’t a bad meal and we enjoyed the sixties music again! Later, we walked to the Old Town Square where we sat outside and had beer and coffee. It was a lovely warm evening – ideal for the cafés in the square.

Friday May 3rd. At breakfast, some Italians were making up pack lunches of bread, cheese, ham etc from the buffet table. They were filling carrier bags with the stuff! It was really rather disgusting.

We took the tram to Vysehrad, a large complex with ramparts, a park, a church, a fortress and a cemetery where we found the graves of Smetana, Dvorak and Mrs Bendova! After looking around the area we walked back past the Palace of Culture to the Metro and took a trip to the end of the line. When we arrived there, we saw nothing but multi-storey flats – block after block of them outside the Metro station.

We didn’t stay and took the train back to La Pavlova. From there, we walked towards the river, past the back of the National Museum into Namesti Karlova where there is a lovely town hall and park. We had lunch in a nearby Italian restaurant called Pizza Taxi. I had pasta and Norman had salad – both with beer. It wasn’t bad for about £6.50.

We walked back to Národni Trida, the Metro station nearest to Tesco, and had a good laugh at the window display in the shop. After all, Tesco at home don’t display washing up liquid and so on in their windows. It looked rather strange. We returned to the hotel and I went to the stamp shop close to the hotel and bought four stock books filled with stamps – mainly Eastern European. Then we caught the Metro back to Národni Trida and Walked down to Ostroff, the Italian restaurant, which is on an island in the river. We had a beer there and booked a table for tomorrow night. They gave us a little freebie while we were having our beer. It is a lovely site for a restaurant, but I wonder what has happened to it now. It must have been completely submerged by the floods a few months later.

Afterwards, we continued across the bridge to the other side of the river and walked around that area for a while. It was a lovely warm evening so we sat in the square below Charles Bridge for some time, before walking under the bridge to the Metro station and making our way back to the hotel for coffee in the bar.

Saturday 4th May. After breakfast, we caught the Metro to Obecni Dum and booked to go on a tour of the building at 2pm. Then we walked through the Old Town Square and took some more photographs. The fact that the square is always full of tourists cannot detract from its beauty. The buildings are stunning and from many different eras in many different styles. They have been beautifully renovated. There is invariably a crowd by the astronomical clock on every hour, and there are always touts of every complexion, in their Mozart costumes, selling tickets for some of the numerous classical concerts, which take place in every available public building in the city. The illumination of the square, in the evening, is lovely and it is always a delightful place in which to sit and watch the world go by, as Kafka and others used to do in times gone by.

We walked the Jewish Quarter again. This is one of the oldest areas of Prague. The synagogues were preserved by Hitler and were to become a museum of an extinct race. Sadly, this is almost what they have become, as the Nazis murdered most of the Jews in Prague. The walls of the Pinkas bear the names of 80,000 Jews who died in concentration camps. The old synagogue is the oldest building in Prague. Afterwards we walked down to the river and along the bank. We sat by the Vltava for a while, watching the boats go by. It was a beautiful day again. I wanted to revisit the Kafka Café, where we had been a few times during our last visit, so we went there for coffee and a very disappointing pastry.

Obecni Dum is an amazing place. The tour was very interesting with a pleasant guide who spoke reasonably good English – certainly much better than our Czech! I had not realised how large the place is. It contains the largest concert hall in Prague in addition to various other conference rooms, staterooms and so on. There are three restaurants and we were quite impressed when we looked at the menu in the basement restaurant, which is much cheaper than the French restaurant. Of course, the décor of the whole place is quite amazing and includes a lot of work by Mucha and others from the same period.

After returning to the hotel to change, we went to the ballet at the States Theatre. This is the beautiful theatre where Mozart conducted the first performance of Don Giovanni. We had known we were going to see the Polotsvian Dances from Prince Igor by Borodin but weren’t sure what the other item on the programme was. I had certainly never heard of the ballet. It turned to be another version of La Fille Mal Gardé and this was an excellent performance. We were both very impressed, although our hearts had plummeted when we realised that there was no live orchestra and the corps was dancing to recorded music. Once the ballet started, we forgot all about that. The dancing and the acting were really good.

We had a drink at Slavia before going to Ostroff for an excellent meal. We had been in two minds whether or not to return to this restaurant after our last visit. This was because of a surfeit of salt in the potatoes. I suspected this was accidental and am now convinced it was. We had a nice wine and good coffee, and the whole meal was not too expensive. Afterwards, we walked to Staromestská and caught the Metro back to the hotel. It was a beautiful evening again – very warm.

Sunday 5th May was our first gloomy day. After breakfast we complained about the standard of cleaning in the room. We were not as impressed with the hotel this time as previously. For one thing, the girls at reception were quite unhelpful. As the weather wasn’t too good, we decided to explore the other termini on the Metro lines. We went to both ends of Line B. One end was a bus depot for an out of town shopping park, which included stores such as Tesco and Ikea. The other end, Czerny Most, was a forest of high-rise flats, a little nicer than the ones we had seen at the end of Line A.
Next we went to the National Museum, which featured mainly displays of geology, zoology and palaeontology with a few bits and pieces from the prehistoric and Roman ages. It wasn’t really my cup of tea. I find I can only look at a certain number of rocks without becoming rather bored. We didn’t stay there for long and when we emerged it was raining quite hard. There didn’t seem to be much alternative to returning to the hotel and reading our books for a while. After all, there was nowhere we simply had to visit in the pouring rain.

We left the hotel again at about 3pm and went to the basement restaurant in Obecni Dum. The décor was lovely and so was the meal. We both had potato and wild mushroom soup followed by roast duck with dumplings, fried onions and beetroot. Norman had beer and I had grapefruit juice. Only the coffee was disappointing. Of course, it was much cheaper than the French Restaurant. We went upstairs to the shop and I bought a book for a friend and a video of Prague. I discovered later that the video was fine apart from the absolutely awful commentary and music.

After a quick trip back to the hotel to change, we went to a wonderful concert at the Rudolphinum, Prague’s premier concert hall. The tickets were only £6.50 each. The first piece on the programme was Smetana’s Vltava from Ma Vlas. It was wonderful, especially listening to this music with the river itself flowing past the door. Both Norman and I had tears in our eyes as we listened. Little did we think that, in a few short months, the river would be flowing into the concert hall. A splendid performance of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto followed, and then Brahms’ First Symphony. There were two encores: the intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana followed by one of Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances. Then it was time for coffee at Café Slavia before returning to the hotel.

Monday 6th May was our last full day in Prague! We walked down Kricikova and found a bread shop selling coffee and cakes etc, so we had breakfast there for a change. Then we caught the Metro to Národni Miru on the A Line.

This was another lovely area we had not seen before. There was a nice square with a park and a church in the middle. All around were lovely buildings including an obviously important theatre. We walked along one of the streets to an area where there were quite a lot of large detached houses, then took a tram back to the square. This was not a touristy area. In fact there were very few tourists outside the main attractions such as Charles Bridge, the Old Town Square and the Jewish Quarter. We had salad and coffee in an Italian restaurant near to the theatre.
After lunch we walked past the television tower to the Jewish cemetery, where we saw the graves of Kafka and his parents and the memorial to his three sisters who died in the holocaust.

It was time for a little more exploration, this time on Line C, as we were fairly close to one end of that Metro line already. We made the exciting discovery of a bus depot, a supermarket and lots more high-rise flats as usual. A quick trip to the opposite end of the line took us to a huge traffic island. There were not so many flats in this area, across the other side of the river, but there was yet another bus depot. The transport system seems to be very good. We walked down a street with nice buildings leading back to the castle area. Then we caught the Metro back to the hotel, changed and went to Café Slavia at about 6pm.

We both had Prague ham with horseradish, mustard and chips. As usual, I had pancakes with summer fruits and Norman had apple strudel. We both had fresh orange juice with our meal and espresso afterwards. It was all very good and Norman took a sneaky photo of me while I was enjoying it. We have eaten pretty well in Prague this time.

Across the road, we watched Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet at the National Theatre. We had visited this theatre on our last visit to Prague, and made sure we took a few photographs of the lovely interior on this occasion. The ballet was very good, and there was a live orchestra on this occasion. We noticed the principals from Saturday’s performance in the corps de ballet.

It was a delightful ending to another lovely visit to Prague. I hope it will not be too long before we return there again.