55, bd. JOURDAN

I’m back from Prague — where I have to admit, I had a blast. I was there for three days this week, and walked more than I thought possible. The weather was a bit gloomy, but cleared up significantly on the second day, and I got some great shots looking over the city.

The first day was a bit of an orientation day for me. Getting used to the language proved a bit tricky, and even though knowing Polish facilitated things some the little things - I mostly got by with English. Though I did dare to visit solely authentic Czech restaurants for dinner (the knedliky really grew on me). The on thing that I will admit threw me were the conversions (22kc to a dollar), which meant that things were significantly cheaper than in Paris — but paying 30kc for a cup of mulled wine felt somehow non-intuitive.

I managed to get a great view of the city from a couple of different sites. I hadn’t realized the topography of the city was so different from Krakow, so there was a lot of climbing, and a LOT of steep stairways as one ventured out from the river. The first day I had a spectacular view of the city from a hill-top park topped by a giant metronome (previously a the world’s largest statue of Stalin). Later I would make the trek to the Prague castle (Pražský hrad), which has a great viewing terrace overlooking the river — as well as Petrin Hill, home to a mini-Eiffel tower with its own viewing platform. All in all, an interesting assortment of panoramas.

View from the Petřínská rozhledna (Mini-eiffel Tower)

Since the hostel I booked was right around the corner from the Old Town square (and only about $20 a night) there was no chance of me getting ridiculously lost, and it was easy enough to go out at night without worrying about being in a ‘shady’ part of town. Even though a lot of the city had been transformed into one geared towards tourists, and I’d heard stories of the locals being less than friendly to foreigners, I didn’t encounter any problems. In fact, I managed to find a great free tour of the city right in the Old Town Square.

Quite possibly the most touristy thing I managed to do my entire stay was to buy a Prague Card - a 350kc investment that allowed me free entry to nearly all of the historical sites in the city. But since I would have spent about 3 times this amount on tickets, especially with all of the individual tickets needed for the different parts of the castle,  I think it was incredibly worth it.

I’d go over all of the different sites I visited … but that would probably be several pages worth of entries. I’ll just say though that the Old Town square is not to be missed, the views from the Castle are gorgeous, the Saint Vitrus Cathedral (especially its Mucha stained glass) is spectacular, and the view from the Charles Bridge tower is great - especially if you can get in at dusk!

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