Day Two, Prague

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(Even after taking an Advil PM we were only able to sleep until about 5AM local time. Hopefully this does not put a damper on our plans for the day.)

Our hotel offers a complimentary continental breakfast, which is not always usual for hotels in Europe. The breakfast is more than what I am used to and it was great - lots of breads, cheeses, meats, cereal, eggs (scrambled and hardboiled), yogurt, salad, green beans, sausage. In addition to coffee and tea, they also had orange juice and champagne. I wonder if it’s like that every day or if today was somehow special because it was Christmas. We shall see. But even the spread was not my favorite part about breakfast - I loved the setting. Breakfast is held in a small cellar, something gothic-looking with arches and stones. I hope that we get down to breakfast early again so that I can take a picture of the cellar without others being around.

We decided that we wanted to explore the town on foot today. I planned on focusing on the Jewish quarter, then maybe finding a little restaurant called Kabul and having a good late lunch there. We brought a couple small maps and the camera, but we’re trying not to carry our wallets, etc., because Prague is known to have a lot of trouble with thieves and pickpockets.

Since we were out and walking by 8:15 on Christmas day it seemed for a while that we were the only people out and about. It was nice to have the streets to ourselves for a while. On our way to the Charles Bridge we decided to take a detour to Petrin Hill - at the top of the hill is a tower that is modeled after the Eiffel Tower, and one can climb this tower for a view of the city. We were warned that the path up the hill was steep and wooded, but I didn’t think much of that until we were climbing. The word “steep” does not do the path justice. We made it, eventually. As we were up and walking around (the tower was still closed - most places seem to open around 10AM) we ran into a few more people. One thing that I noticed was that everyone seemed to have a dog (or two or three). Last night I saw dogs off-leash and thought that it was just odd. Apparently that is not actually unusual. Many dogs were off-leash but the dogs were all so well behaved! I was very impressed. And after seeing SO MANY dogs yesterday I became convinced that every single citizen of Prague must have a dog. Perhaps this is an exaggeration, but I have never seen a place where so many people have dogs or a city that is so dog-friendly. I told Matthew that I could live here and Baby (Lotus) would be happy, but he said he couldn’t live here. Why not? “It’s too cold!”

Even though we tried layering, it was frigid and the wind, when it crept up, was biting. Layers and layers of clothing didn’t protect against it. We were warm when hiking up and down Petrin Hill, but after that we cooled off again. After wandering through the town, across Charles Bridge, and into the Old Town Nam (the same area of town that has the Jewish quarter) we decided to get coffee. A place called Coffee Heaven looked promising, like a very cute (and trendy) Starbucks or better. We walked in and ordered lattes and sat down to defrost. The Coffee Heaven looked like a tiny store front from the outside, but once inside it was huge - large sitting rooms in the back and a basement floor where people could smoke while drinking coffee. The lattes were excellent and I couldn’t figure out why it tasted so sweet compared to American lattes. My conclusion now? Either they treat their cows better so they get sweeter milk or they still make coffee with whole milk (which I haven’t had in years and that could be the difference).

My true Jewish nature showed today when it came to touring the sites of Jewish history in Prague. Most of Prague’s tourist sites charge, which bothers me and I definitely have a hard time paying large fees to see buildings. There are six Jewish sites - synagogues, cemetery, museum - and to get a ticket that covers all of them costs 300 Kc, which is just over $15. That much to see buildings? Forget it! I took pictures of the outside instead. Maybe I’ll change my mind later in the week, but for now I just couldn’t bring myself to spend $30 so the two of us could go inside.

We continued walking around the eastern side of Prague through many neighborhoods. We kept making our way back to the Old Town Nam and eventually decided to have a late lunch at a little Italian restaurant - we split a salmon appetizer and a pizza and each had pivo for $16, which I thought was very good. It was at this time that Matthew told me I should probably be careful with my use of language - I say dobry den to people and am then met my a flood of Czech that only turns into English when people see my dazed and confused look. Well, maybe one day this will change and I’ll know a bit more. Regardless, we had a nice lunch and then decided we were tired of walking around.

We walked so much that by the time we reached our hotel I checked our steps and we had reached over 24,000! That should be somewhere around 12.5 miles in six hours. We were SO TIRED when we got back to the hotel! We lay down for a nap and I had a really hard time getting back up. Originally we decided to go out after the nap and get dinner, but upon waking up we decided that we weren’t really that hungry after all. I actually get more hungry thank Matthew (who would apparently live without food on a vacation if he had to), but I wasn’t hungry enough to actually get up and go searching for something. Maybe we’ll lose weight on this trip? Instead of dinner we sat reading and planning our next day and then watching tv on Matthew’s computer before taking some Advil PM and calling it a night.

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Photos

Hiking up Petrin Hill
This wall was Charles IV's idea -- give the poor people something to do so they stop whining about food.

View from Charles Bridge
Here is a little nam underneath the Charles Bridge.

Vlatava River
Another view from the Charles Bridge

Spanish Synagogue
One of several synagogues in Prague -- but I am still not paying $15 to see the inside.