Czech: Part 2
On our second full day in Prague, we had more of a schedule, so we woke up a bit earlier to get our day started. The day before, we decided we wanted to see the Romeo and Juliet ballet at the national theatre and had managed to get tickets at the last minute on my phone while walking through Wenceslas Square. The matinee show was cheaper and had more seats available, so we purchased that and had a commitment to being there by 2 pm. This meant we couldn’t hang out at a café for an hour enjoying a coffee, some breakfast and getting work done. We still had a good sit down coffee from a quaint little café down next to the tram stop, then we grabbed a takeaway breakfast of a pastry and fruit from the supermarket next door before heading across the river on the tram to go explore Prague Castle.
Our first day in Prague was such a beautiful warm autumn day, but that didn’t last long. Soon after we exited the tram in Mala Strana, it started raining hard and we took shelter with all the other tourists heading up to the castle that day. The rain let up after about ten minutes, and we set off to find the gardens. These were supposed to be right next to the tram stop, but we were struggling to find an entrance. Eventually we figured out that they had closed for the season, and the last day they were open was 31 October – the day before we arrived in Prague. This was disappointing, but we continued walking up the hill toward Prague Castle looking to see if any other gardens were still open. We found the gardens under the castle wall, which were still open for a few more days before they would also close for the season, but we could see it from outside the gate and decided that we didn’t need to pay for entry. We took a couple of photos before we continued the rest of the way up to the castle, navigating our way through the increasingly dense crowd of tourists.
When we reached the top, it was an impressive sight. The castle was a somewhat unassuming building except for the ornate, gothic gate with armed guards posted out front. We watched a crowd of over one hundred people gather at the front of the gate taking photos and videos of the changing of the guard. It was a very mundane guard change and took forever with the meaningless and slow syncronised movements they were making to get themselves into position. We left before it finished so that we could get a better view of the castle with the tall black spires of St Vitus Cathedral rising up from in the background. This is the building that we could see from our walk along the river the day before, watching over the entire city, and it was by far the most impressive part of the castle area on top of the hill.
We kept walking along the top of the hill, taking more photos of the other buildings up there, like the national gallery with its patterned bricks. We didn’t linger too long on top of the hill, and we walked back down the other side, back into Mala Strana. The path down the hill was lined with souvenir shops and restaurants advertising authentic local cuisine, “Best Goulash in Prague!”, and other gimmicks to lure in tourists. We really enjoyed the previous couple of days where we were able to find nice little shops, pubs and restaurants that weren’t trying to be anything for the tourists outside of the busier areas. The whole experience from the Charles bridge up to the castle was entirely catered to attracting tourists, and the tourists were swarming. We just wanted to get down the hill and out of there as quickly as possible.
The most picturesque Starbucks we’ve ever seen
Unfortunately, we had a few more places we wanted to visit in the busy Mala Strana before heading back to get ready for the ballet. The one we specifically went for was another David Cerny statue, the Urinating Sculptures fountain, which were two statues of men in sliced sections like the Kafka head, faced toward each other and peeing into a small pond. This was right next to “the narrowest road in the world”, which had a line across the street to get through. We were there already, so we decided to wait in the line and walk down the narrow road. It had a little stoplight at the top to allow foot traffic in only one direction at a time. When our turn came and we walked through, it was just a restaurant with nowhere to go except back up through the narrow road. It was more of an entry to the restaurant, and very much an unsatisfactory experience. We then walked through a small public garden across the road, before heading back to our apartment to get ready for the ballet.
We intended to get ready and walk over to the State Theatre early so we could get some lunch before the ballet, but we misjudged the timing and were too late for a full sit down meal. We couldn’t find anything takeaway either, so we popped into a small grocery store to buy some chips, and that would hold us over until after the ballet. The ballet was at the State Opera, it wasn’t the National Theatre like we were expecting, but it was a similar beautiful old theatre, decorated and ornamented from floor to ceiling inside. We had two seats in a box on the side of the theatre that we shared with three other people, a Czech mum and her daughter, and an old British guy. We were there about fifteen minutes early which gave us time to take photos of the beautiful interior of the opera theatre before the show started.
We bought the cheapest seats available, and I think we paid about $80 total for both tickets, so we couldn’t believe how good of a view it was from the box. We could see everything on stage clearly, as well as the orchestra down in the pit, and the show was incredible. The dancing, orchestra, and everything about the production was world class, and we couldn’t believe it was all for a total of $80. This would cost a minimum of $200 each anywhere else in the world.
We had a great time with this whole experience, but we were starving when it was finished. Once we left the theatre, we walked about five minutes up the street to the pub we intended to go to before the show. It was down a staircase, in a brick basement. It wasn’t too grungy, but it was definitely a classic pub, and we were very overdressed in our ballet outfits. With a couple of pints of beer, some roast duck and a pork chop to fill us up, we quickly got past how out of place we looked, and were satisfied after a long day without enough food. This was another great little pub, and when we made it back to the apartment full of good beer and excellent food, we couldn’t bring ourselves to do anything other than jump into bed and call it a night.
On our third and final full day in Prague, we enjoyed another slow morning. We found another new coffee shop for some coffee and breakfast, and we spent some extra time there to get some work done before heading back to the apartment to get ready for the day.
Our final day took us back to the same tram stop in Mala Strana as we had visited the day before. It was a touristy area, but it also housed the Kafka Museum, which I was excited to visit. We spent a couple of hours wandering around the museum, reading letters and manuscripts and learning about Franz Kafka’s life in Prague in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. It wasn’t the most remarkable museum of artifacts ever, but we learned a lot about how his life and this city shaped his writing. It was fascinating and I’m excited to reread some of his stories to understand them with this new context.
Urinating Sculptures in front of the Kafka Museum
We didn’t stick around the area very long after finishing at the museum and walked up another hill on the other side of Prague Castle to Letna Park. It was a lovely park with all the yellow and orange trees, and when we reached the top, it offered a great panoramic view over the city and the river. We took some photos then walked along the paths weaving through the trees and the ponds. It was right next to Prague Castle, and we could see the black spires of St Vitus Cathedral over the tops of the trees, but it was much more quiet here, with mostly locals out walking their dogs. Our objective was to reach the beer garden at the end of the park and have a drink before heading back down the hill, but the change in weather the day before brought some colder temperatures and it wasn’t going to be a pleasant day to sit outdoors with a cold beer. We opted to just take a few more photos from the top of the hill and walk back down to take the tram back to the apartment.
We spent another quiet afternoon in the apartment before heading back out for dinner. For dinner on our last night, we settled on going to another pub. This one had been recommended by Taylor (my cousin). It was his favourite place when he lived here during his semester abroad, and he had lived just upstairs. It was only a twenty minute walk to the pub, but the route went under a freeway and past the train station, so it was a bit of a dark empty area to be walking through at night. We were close enough to the city still that we knew it was a safe area, but it just felt a bit dodgy. When we made it to the pub, we were back in a nice neighbourhood, and we went to sit downstairs in the restaurant for dinner. We had a great meal, a liter of beer, and some wine, and we were very happy with where we ended up that night. Our food choices felt like they got progressively better through our stay in Prague, and this place had the best food and cheapest prices of anywhere we had been thus far.
Looking out over Prague from Letna Park
After dinner, we didn’t want to walk back the same route that we had taken earlier. We walked up through the neighborhood (Karlin) which was a great neighborhood with the streets lined with shops, pubs and other restaurants. We probably should have made more time to explore this area, but it was a comfortable place to walk back, until we had to cut across the park. Google Maps was taking us on a path through the park, but when we arrived at the path, it went under the park rather than through it. It was well lit, but a long empty tunnel didn’t feel any more comforting than the dark streets under the freeway. But we had made it this far, so we went into the tunnel, remembering that it’s a nice area in a safe city. About halfway through, we could see this group of people standing around up ahead of us. This was a little unsettling, but we kept going. When we arrived at the group, they turned out to be doing a photoshoot for some clothes. There was nothing dodgy about it at all, and we made it through with no problems.
When we made it back to the apartment, we packed up all our clothes that were hanging off all the doors and furniture in the apartment after doing laundry, then went to bed, ready to leave Prague in the morning.
The next morning, we woke up early, went down to grab a takeaway coffee, and finished packing up to head to the train to Brno. Trip went smooth, and we arrived in Brno around noon. We had booked another apartment, so we had to find somewhere to leave our bags until 3 pm when we were able to check in. We took the tram into the city, without paying for a ticket since we couldn’t figure out the ticket machine and left our bags at the tourist information centre so we could explore the town.
After the early morning, and the takeaway coffee, the first thing on our list for Brno was to find a coffee shop, but once we had topped up our caffeine levels, we went for a walk around central Brno. It had a nice old downtown area with a church up on the hill, but it only took us two hours to explore everything, and we still had twenty minutes to kill before we could access our apartment. Despite the single digits (Celsius) temperatures, we decided the best thing to do was to get some gelato.
Horse statue in Brno
A cute little town filled with old buildings and street art like this statue. It was a nice afternoon, but that’s all we needed to see everything.
It was a great gelato, and I needed the energy, because when we were able to check in, we had to haul the bags up 4 flights of stairs. It was a nice apartment right in the centre of Brno, but our bags were heavy, and I was thinking the whole way up about how we would have to take them right back down the next day.
Having explored all of Brno already, the first thing we did in the room was change our trip the next day to a morning train. We did not need to spend another full day in Brno, and we wanted to get to Vienna to have some extra time there. Then, with limited options for activities for the night, I found a climbing gym about a twenty minute train ride away, and left Millie in the apartment to go to the gym. She had some other things she needed to get done, and it felt like a break from the non-stop travelling in new cities to go to do this activity that is a part of my daily life at home.
After the gym, we went to the pub just below our apartment, had one last good Czech pub feed and a couple of final Czech pilsners before Austria. We really enjoyed Czech, the beautiful art and architecture, smaller cities, good cafes and good pubs. Millie even called Prague her favourite city in Europe, and it’s somewhere we will have to return in the future.
