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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
Filed under Prague, Czech Republic · Print This Post
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 Švejk 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 Švejků and one of the pubs the writer Jaroslav Hašek 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
