Central Europe Tour: Day 03: Prague

---

First full day in Prague. We had to sleep a bit extra today until 7:30 PM. Breakfast here is not included in the daily rate. We will have to pay 12 Euros in addition per person here. After morning shower etc, we headed to the breakfast. If you compare this to the hotels we have been to in India, this spread is very average. THere is no hot item other than bioled eggs. There were varieties of pastries, bread, fruit and Yogurt. It would be difficult to skip lunch with this intake. We loaded up as much as we could. Person at the reception was able to give us a map and point us to the subway station where we could buy a tram ticket to the Prague Castle. This was our first attraction. THe castle is on a hill other side of the river. Once we take a tram one way, we could walk back via the famous 14th century Charles bridge (only for pedatrians) in the evening. We had to use the czech money (crowns) to buy tram tickets. I was able to use the ATM machine in the subway to withdraw money in local currency. Best way to avoid these exchange rate scams is to depend on the banks. At least, their rates are standard. People here understand English. Most of them speak as well to some extent. People are very friendly and helpful. But there was a bit of confusion initially on how to identify stops and where to alight for the castle. Once we figured this out, we were near the Prague castle gates. This is on a hill verlooking Prague. It is a huge complex with palaces, church, courtyards, buildings etc. We bought a 'long visit' ticket that would at least require 4 hours to sight see. We first saw the St. Vitus Cathedral. This was constructed in 14th century. Huge glass panels and murals. Lack of description of what the statues and structures depicted was a bit frustrating. It would be nice to have some caption on all these items. We debated joining a tour group (English instruction) or an audio guide. But the timing did not work out. As it is practice in most of Europe, one needs to pay to use the toilets. After the church, we witnessed guard of honor and a parade by palace gaurds in the main courtyard. It was very elaborate with motorbikes, horses and soldiers. We visited the main palace, golden lane (workers - goldsmith, seamstress etc) and powder tower. It was cold outside with intermittent showers. By 3 PM we were exhausted and wanted to be indoors to be warm and have something to eat. There were plenty of souvenier shops and cafes here. We bought some sandwiches and apple pie here. Pie was very good. By the time we finished the remaining attractions here, it was 5:30 PM. Now we had to head back to the 'new town' where the hotel is via Charles bridge. This is purely a pedastrian bridge with lot of statues and artwork decorating either side of the protective wall. It is over the Vlatana river. There were plenty of vendors selling small trinklets, caricature artists etc here. A leisure walk can take you at least 30 minutes to cover this stretch. We went to some souvenier shop on the other end and headed back to the hotel. Since we had a map, it was not difficult to follow the roads. All roads have signs and one can see people walking everywhere. There are pedastrian crossing in all important road junctions. We reached our hotel around 7:30 PM. There are quite a few Veg restaurants in Prague. This one we identified is very close to our hotel. It is called "Radost FX". It is a music lounge. We decided not to go to the lounge area since it was a smoking area. The food was nice with quite a bit of choices including "Bollywood Curry". We finished our dinner close to 10 PM and headed back

---