An alternative visit to Prague
(With extra special gluten free tips!)
The last weekend before Easter I took a little weekend trip to Prague, to meet Jade and see the sights!
The last time I went to Prague for touristing was when I was on language school in Poděbrady, which is almost two years ago, so I was pretty excited to do it all again and to see Jadey after such a long time!
We arrived in Prague on Thursday night, and after meeting Jade to the airport we made our way to the Plus Prague Hostel (which was bargainous and is SO NICE you have to stay there ;) thank you Rachel for your recommendation!) Although it is a little further from the centre, it only took us 15 minutes to get there by foot/metro so it was hardly a hassle. By this time it was already 10:30 so we called it a night and decided to get up bright and early and get going the next day :D
Up at the crack of 9:30am on Friday we were raring to go, so grabbed a cheeky free map from reception and headed out. The map had a handy "alternative" walking tour, which we decided would be ideal because it took you to all the major sights via less obvious and touristy routes - perfect. As it was the Easter holidays and warm, the crowds were out in force, so anything we could do to avoid them was a blessing! Our tour started up at the museum, which is pretty epic, standing grandly at the top of Wenceslas Square.
After admiring the museum and the statue of the Good King himself, we wandered down the ever-crowded Wenceslas Square before turning off to take a more scenic and calm route through a small garden. We followed the garden around, went down a few side streets and popped up again by the Old Synagogue and the Jewish cemetery. I had heard from a few people/websites/guide books that the cemetery was really worth seeing, and as I hadn't seen it on my last visit to Prague, I was quite keen to check it out. But after seeing the queue and the fact you had to pay, we decided not to bother going inside, and our map even gave us a cheeky window to look through, so we got to see it for free after all! It was basically just a really old cemetery... But the history of it is what makes it more interesting: in such a tiny space there are thought to be 12,000 tomb stones visible and it is thought that over 100,000 people have been buried there... It's kind of creepy now I think about it!
Our route then took us past a pretty impressive law building of Prague uni (it could rival Wills in Bristol), over the river Vltava, up a billion steps to a really cool view over Prague. You could see the whole city, including Charles Bridge, Mala Strana andthe castle, it was such a sneaky but good spot to see everything! Also at the top of the hill was a restaurant, which was in such a interesting building, but after seeing that their special for the day was lobster (and it wasn't cheap) we thought it might be a bit out of our lunch time price range.
We then followed the route around to a back entrance to the castle (very sneaky), which we looked round before heading down into Mala Strana for a spot of lunch. I love Mala Strana, it feels like a different city, set aside from the rest of Prague, with its matching red roofs and cream buildings. If you go down the side streets away from the tourist bit, you can find all sorts of sweet little shops and houses and buildings. Sadly the main road from Charles Bridge to the Castle is tourist heaven, with hoards of people and shops selling everything from wooden toys to giant gingerbread Easter eggs...
Unfortuenately to get to Charles bridge we had to take this route and fight the crowds! I have heard that the best time to visit the bridge is at dawn, because there is no one around and it is a beautiful place to be when the sun comes up. But as neither Jade nor I are morning people, we ended up there in the afternoon. It was still enough for us to take in the view and the towers though which is all we needed :)
From Charles bridge we made our way along the river to the Vyšehrad, past the slightly random Dancing House. The Vyšehrad is the Westminster of the Czech Republic, where all the famous authors are buried. I saw the stones for Neruda and Němcová, authors I studied in first and second year at uni, which was interesting but again a little bit creepy!
On the hill by the Vyšehrad is a nice green area, and as we had been walking for what felt like a million years by that point, we crashed on they grass in the sun for a bit and decided our next move - aka go back to our hostel, chill, and then head out for dinner.
Food tip #1: Jade and I went to a restaurant recommended by my Czech friend Daniela (thank you so much!!) which claimed to have the best burger in Prague. Normally you have to be a little bit careful with the whole "we sell the best in the world!" thing (if you've seen Elf, you'll know what I mean), but this really was the best burger I have ever had. It literally had ALL the burger trimmings (sorry Dad) you could think of, had a crispy bread bun (which I obvs didn't have) and a side of triple fried herby chips and home made tartar sauce. Not so nutritious but AMAZING. This is the website, if you are ever in Prague, go here :D http://www.cafepalanda.cz/en
After a bit of an unsuccessful night of trying to find a bar, we ended up finding a hole-in-the-wall take away cocktail place, so just grabbed one of those for our journey back, like you do... It actually really yummy with half a fruit salad attached to it and was cheap!
Day 2 and we were wondering what to do, having pretty much seen everything the day before, but Daniela had told us about a Farmers market, so we decided to go and check that out. As we didn't end up getting there until 12ish, a lot of the things they were selling had already gone, but there were still stalls selling interesting looking juices and syrups so we had a look round before heading to the Old Town Square so that Jade could see the astronomical clock do its thing. This is always a very strange experience... Basically every hour a huge crowd forms to watch the some things happen on the clock and then they all cheer at the end! All very strange. The best part of the whole saga is that a man appears at the top of the tower and plays the trumpet for a couple of seconds, aside from that it isn't hugely exciting, but just seems to be a rite of passage for every Prague visitor!
After the excitement of the clock we went off to find somewhere to have lunch, and ended up in a nice pub on the other side of town, up past the museum and near a park. The food was yummy and I persuaded Jade to have her first ever fried cheese (food jealousy or what?!) which I'm pleased to say she loved ;D another rite of passage if you are visiting any part of the Czech Rep, which I explain in more detail in the post "What is Smaž?". Nicely full of food we decided to go and find a beer garden so Jade could tick that off of her Prague bucket list. The one we found (in the Park I mentioned, sorry to be so vague!) was in a fab location, as the park was at the top of a hill and had a pretty spectacular view over the whole city. Jade had a beer, I had a tea, we were nicely refreshed and enjoying the view. Maybe not seeing sights but soaking in the culture another way :D feeling refreshed we made our way back in to the old town, went back over Charles bridge to Mala Strana to have a wander around and soak up the atmosphere.
This was were the pedalo antics really began... We had been eyeing them up since we had first seen them on Friday morning, and seeing everyone just bobbing and shooping around in them in the warm spring air, we had no choice but to go and hire one ourselves... Which was the best thing ever! Talk about an alternative view of Prague! You get to see Prague castle, Charles bridge, you can even see the roof of the National Theatre (normally there is scaffolding in the way) whilst floating along instead of fighting with millions of other people. A very relaxing end to our day, and I'd recommend it to anyone who goes to Prague, provided there isn't a queue or anything silly like that. It wasn't even that much money for a whole hour between the two of us.
Sunday we had a bit of a lie in and then went for brunch for the start of our sophisticated day (mainly a day of food ;) ).
Food tip #2: the Cafe Louvre is on the same road as the National Theatre, and has a very big sign so it can't be missed. Don't be put off by the slightly shady/tacky looking outside, the inside is soooo cool! It's claim to fame is the number of famous, clever people who used to frequent it, Albert Einstein and Franz Kafka to name a few. The decor makes you feel as if you are in some sort of Downton Abbey type film (which, of course, I LOVED) and the food and drinks are to die for, and aren't even that pricey! What not to be missed is the real hot chocolate (not one for healthy eaters, but it's amazing) which is essentially melted chocolate mixed with cream. Of course Jade and I had to have one, but we weren't complete slobs, we obviously had breakfast too... Of ice cream sundes yay! Nothing like loads of ice cream, caramel and chocolate at 11am ;) my kinda meal!
Extremely satisfied with all of the sugar we had just eaten, we thought we had better make use of our last day together in Prague and get some more culture. We headed over the river by metro, to catch a tram to the stop for the funicular train which would take us up to the top of Petřín hill. (Sadly I wasn't paying attention to the names of the tram stops so we did go quite far past our stop before we got off and walked back... My bad.) Petřín hill is a strange place in a kind of weird fairy tale way. You can take the funicular with your Prague travel pass, which was handy, and I do love a good old funicular. We zipped up to the top and went to check out the mini Eiffel Tower (obvs) and other random sights they have there.
It was a nice wander around and we got some groovy pictures of Prague and the castle from another alternative view, but sadly most of the sights you had to pay for. After hunting out the magical cavern (which I was really intrigued by) and finding out it was essentially a creepy house, we decided it was time to head back down the hill and find ourselves some lunch (yes we were already hungry by this time, chocolate and ice cream doesn't keep you full for long). I had done some googling on places to eat gluten free, so I dragged Jade to a Švejk restaurant slightly out of the main tourist area. The restaurants are a chain of pubs but most of them don't have GF offers, this one on the over hand, had a whole menu!
Food tip #3: Švejk U Karla offers it's whole normal-person menu as a gluten free menu as well! You can imagine my excitement when I saw that they had GF fried cheese and even Czech style dumplings! Oh fried cheese, it had been too long. I kind of got over excited because I really wanted to try Czech dumplings, and so did Jade, but we both wanted the fried cheese... So obviously we both had fried cheese, chips and tartar sauce with a side of GF dumplings to share ;) the waitress did look at us weirdly when I asked for it hehe. But it was AMAZING and was such a nice way to round off a fabulous and alternative weekend in Prague :D
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