Day 2 – Of Czech breakfasts and astronomical clocks

Ok, so this was literally too late, but at least something…a couple of months later

18th of August

We started our second day in Prague by eating breakfast at Kumbál, a little cozy café on the same street as our Airbnb. They offer sweet and salt breakfasts, some healthier and some more filling and less healthy stuff, a lot of different kinds of tea, coffee and some other good snacks, if you want to check the place here is their website. I had a plate with some bread and different kinds of spreads – tuna and eggs, and a coffee, while my boyfriend opted for a homemade muslie.

We started our second long walk in Prague by getting to Wenceslas Square, stopped at a few souvenir places, and a kids shop full of games, staff dressed in funny clothes and nice choreographies. Now that I am writing, I actually find it difficult to understand that we walked as much as we did and saw and visited as many places as I am actually writing about. Since well, after the shop full of games, if I am not wrong and confusing everything, we visited the “city tower” or better the astronomical clock. A lot of steps and really nice view from the top, we made our way down, and found the wax museum which not only had the most common statues of famous actors and singers, but also introduced a bit into the traditional medieval history and fairytale of Prague.

Later we made our way to the Jewish ghetto, which we had walked by the day before but could not visit because closed. The ticket comprehends a long list of buildings you will be able to visit, and which are located mostly close to each other, except for a few ones that are a bit distant from the Jewish district itself. Here come some photos:

While visiting the ghetto, we started thinking about what to eat for lunch…we went around hoping to find some kind of traditional Czech kosher food. However, most of the places we saw had middle-easter liking food, and because my boyfriend is of Lebanese origin, and we have been eating Arabic food quite much in the last time, we opted to visit Lokal once again, the same place where we had eaten dinner the day before, the first day. We met the same waiter, things go so fast and easy when you travel and everything is new but still familiar and friendly! This time we said no to beer, and the guy went: “you don’t like beer? Oh my God…” and went away shaking his head and laughing. We were very tired of all the walking the day before and we just sat, ordered a new traditional dish – or actually more than one – and even ordered a dessert at the end…which I do not think we made in time to think we should take a picture of…funny enough…

We went back to the ghetto and visited many of the places left, such as the cemetery and other ones which right now I am not able to remember as quite much time has gone since we were there…lesson learnt for the next time!

By the way, we gathered our last energy, went through uphills and downhills in the park, to finally arrive home and take a nap. Later it was time to eat dinner, and we chose a place close to the airbnb we stayed at, called Holesovicka Sedma. A nice pub with good food, good price – so strange uh? – and good atmosphere.

Prag 7 is surely a neighborhood to stay at if you are in search of a quite spot not busy nor visited by tourists, with some local markets here and there, good vibe in the neighborhood, low prices, although this also often goes hand in hand with shops not accepting credit cards. All monuments are easily reached by feet here in Prague, or better said, Prague is a really nice city to walk through as the buildings have wonderful colors, there are street food stands everywhere and in a half a hour walk you can get pretty much to very new and different places. After one and a half day in Prague we had walked in total 32 km, but this is, as already named, something that differs from person to person, from traveler to traveller…

Well, a couple of months more and you will be able to read about our third day…deal? 😉

Prague wanders – Day 1 and first impressions

It’s been a while since I wrote something on the blog, and I hope that the mood to write once in a while – but not too “in a while” – will soon come back. Sure thing is that getting around in Prague tasting new food, exploring as many no touristic places as possible and catching the day when there, got me once again eager to start writing on a small notebook when sitting at a café while taking a break, or when drinking a glass of Pilsner waiting for food to be served, or sitting at home while recharging the energy after long walks in the city. What trip am I talking about, you may wonder?

Saturday 17th of August

Well, between the 17th and the 21st of August, I traveled to Prague together with my boyfriend. We booked a cheap Ryanair return flight scheduled in the early morning. We left Malmö and departed from Copenhagen at 8,25 a.m., and as it takes a very short time to get there, we were at Prague airport already around 10 a.m. The Letiště Václava Havla Praha (Prague airport Václava Havla) is just a 20-30 minutes drive from the city center, and as our Airbnb hosts tipsed us on using Uber while in Prague and also because we were very curious to see how it works, we downloaded the app and met our kind driver. For around 9 euros we got to the street Heřmanova, in the district Prag 7, on the side of the city opposite to the Old Town, but on the same one of the Prague castle, and of a very nice park called Letenské sady (Letná park). When booking our Airbnb accommodation and lookin for nice spots to visit, we unavoidably ended up reading Prag 1/2/3/4 and so on at the start or end of every address. This is the deal. Prague districts types are three: the Old districts – used throughout 1960 to 1990, the administrative and the municipal districts. While the last two are 22 in total, the Old districts are 10 in total, and are used daily by tourists and residents to orientate in the city, give directions and for mail e.g.. So, if you are looking for a central, touristic neighborhood to spend your time in Prague, then you should definitely look for spots in Prag 1, 2 or 3, the most central ones, while getting higher in numbers will lead you to less central areas, less busy, more local and less visited by tourists, and of course cheaper places. Both my boyfriend and I love the less touristic areas of a place while traveling, trying to get a genuine experience of the place we visit and avoiding too many people at the same time. Therefore, after reading a bit about Prague areas, safety, prices and reachability to the more central areas of the city – for us 30 minutes walk to reach the city center was not an issue, but there are good public transport connections for those who wish – , we chose an Airbnb in Prague 7.

The neighborhood’s vibe was perfect. There were plenty of pubs, small restaurants, cafés where to eat breakfast or have some snack, all framed by buildings with pastel colored facades that give a feeling of slow pace while getting around the area. We were in Prague quite early, around 10,30 a.m. and took a short walk waiting for our apartment to get ready to check-in. Close to our place, we found a nice surprise on a Saturday, a small local market selling everything from home-made products, fresh vegetables, traditional sweet pastries and some salty snacks made of bread and different types of fillings. Googling about it afterwards I found out it is called the “Heřmaňák flea and farmers’ market” and you can read more about it here. However, although we had to go around quite much before we could find some small change in order to be able to pay in cash – we tasted some really good street food and had a first experience of how cheap things can get in Czech Republic.

We walked up the street and checked-in, left our things, and headed down to the city by walking. We love walking and are very fast walkers, so getting to the city could sometimes take us 20 or 30 minutes, depending on how many stops we made and so on. We chose to walk through Letná park, which in summer is just amazing as it is naturally bright everywhere, is visited by many people and there is a festival going on throughout summer. There you can also get a very nice view of the city from above. We walked by the Prague Metronome, a functioning but still not always active Metronome that is a meeting point for young people, and a good spot to observe the city. We walked forward and reached an area where food stands, circus tents and some other stuff were placed. We planned to google a bit about this festival but I just did it for a few minutes ago, but we never visited during the following days. However, if you want to attend the International Festival of New Theatre and Circus called Letní Letná, than you should definitely visit this website.

We walked down the hill, crossed the bridge Mánesův most (=bridge) and got closer to the rest of the city. Now I do not remember every street we walked through while doing our first exploration, but we went through the Jewish district, which was unfortunately closed as it was a Saturday, and decided to visit it in the following days. After a long walk, we went back home, got some sleep and started walking again back to the city to eat dinner, at a spot our hosts tipsed to eat at and that was named multiple times as a place where to eat very good Czech food. The place is called Lokál and we ate there twice during our time in Prague. It is located in the Old Town district, and quite busy throughout the day, mostly by locals but also by some tourists. There is a chance to book a table, but we did not think that would be needed, so we went there and realized there would be a long waiting list…but! We were only two so they would find us a spot to seat in less than 10 minutes. Otherwise, write your name on the list, order some beer and immerse yourself in the mess of voices, sounds of plates, good smells from warm dishes and wait to be offered a table. The place is as spartan and indeed “local” as it can get, with a perfect fast service, kind waiters, relative low price and great food. We ordered some food and finally got to relax while waiting for the order to come. We were served some 0.5 lt beer each- without even being asked! – and tried as much as possible to getting used to the taste – neither of us likes beer. However, day after day we slowly got in the Czech mood and enjoyed drinking beer very much while eating some strong meat dish.

The way they take count of beers you buy during your stay, then you bring it to the waiter and pay the check. The waiter crosses the beers every time you order some. It is a thing they do everywhere here in Prague

Goulash beef served with potato and bread dumplings

Broth soup with meatballs and noodles

Three kinds of sausages to taste, served with mustard and cabbage filling

Beef with some carrot sauce served with bread dumplings

Total check from our dinner at Lokál, around 30 euros

After dinner, we started looking for nightlife areas, so we started walking towards Wenceslas Square. On our way there, we walked through and visited the Old Town Square (Staré Město) where St.Nicholas Church, the Church of Our Lady before Týn, the astronomical clock and other wonderful monuments are located – we would visit some of them during the following days. As it was a summer Saturday night there were plenty of people – mostly tourists, in the area, live music was played in a pub that opened doors so that everyone could listen and take part dancing and clapping. While in the “movida” we went into a place that were making some Trdelnik, a sweet pastry typical of Czech Republic, coming from Slovakian and Hungarian food tradition. Trdelnik is filled with creams, ice-creams, curds, fruits, and chocolate depending on what you chose to eat it with…so yummy!

We walked down to Wenceslas Square, a wide long square – which really is an avenue – and realized that it is the Red Light district of Prague, but anyway we also found more “average” bars where to take a drink to end the evening. We had some Piña Colada at a bar called “Da Capo” almost at the end of the square when coming from the Old Town Square. Totally done for the day, we tried to find an UBER but as we did not know how to use the app so good yet, we thought all cars was busy, and we decided to walk home instead. Curios to know how our trip continued? Some more stories about our time in Prague will be on this week, so stay tuned! 😉

Trdelnik