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Published: January 21st 2007
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Prague (or Praha as the locals call it) is indeed a beautiful city. Everyone says it is, and everyone is right. I just feel sorry for the poor schmoe who had to individually lay every one of those 10 million or so 3 x 3 cm cobblestones that line mostly all of the city. We had a few spare minutes and worked out that unless you live to about 115 years old, you don’t live 1 million hours in a lifetime, so either it was more than one guy, or otherwise he was really busy, and lived to an old age. OK, enough about the cobblestones. There is also a castle and a bridge (named The Charles Bridge actually), and its very easy to spend a few days just roaming around. The architecture really is quite beautiful, and in contrast to other places, and what really makes Prague a beautiful city is the fact that in the main city, EVERY building is a work of art. So clean too, similar to Barcelona we noticed on a number of occasions people sweeping or mopping etc. Don’t quite know what the story is for the guy behind Katie, maybe he was a cobblestoner,
(or a cleaner)
. Anyway, one of the squares has a famous clock in it (completely unreadable but maybe that’s what makes it special). Plus it gives the café’s a chance to jack up their prices. Still, can’t really complain about 4 euro for a hot chocolate (seems like a lot more when its called 120 crown and elsewhere its 35 crown). The money is difficult to convert, don’t be shocked to pay 300 crown for something that should be 10 euro, (because that’s the same amount), but buggered if I know a simple way of converting crowns into dollars (a dollar is about 17 crown) so 300 crown is …. $17 (and a bit), everyone knows their 17 times table don’t they? Also stumbled upon the changing of the guard at the castle, which was pretty cool. I recognised the streets around it actually. There is a promotional video for the ol’ 350 Z where the streets of Prague were closed off, and they basically just hooned around for a bit. Kind of clashes with the whole old town gothic architecture and ancient feel, but I must say, it brought a wry smile to my face contemplating getting behind
Prague by Night
The Castle and Bridge at night the wheel of my old car. The weather was not what we were expecting. Had fully prepared for snow, and other freezing Eastern European mid-winter stereotypes. Almost disappointingly, it was only about 8 or 9 celcius, much the same as exotic Bristol. Dispensed with the long johns for day 2, as it really wasn’t any colder than average Melbourne winter, rained a bit, not much, nice really. Other things on the must do list are drinking a Pilsner Urquell, Prague (or more precisely Pilsn is the home of Pilsner - obviously). Not sure if there is a Bitte or a Draug around Melbourne where Carlton derived their inspiration. The food was also pretty good, loved the garlic soup (no vampires for me for the next 100 years or so), and that strudel was worth a few miles of travel for. Had a great Argentinian steak on the Friday night, so good to have a good bit of cow (sorry M and all those vegos out there). Lots of souveneirs from the town, their specialties seem to be wooden toys and my god there is a lot of Czech crystal. They have some clever advertising type slogan people as well, how
Hanging Around
Katie isn’t really yawning in this picture, and at least one other pedestrian is worried is this for a winning T shirt: “I’m in Prague, Czech me out!”, that guy is in for some lovin’. Hotel was great value too, pity about the directions from the web site. Explicit detail (just wrong that’s all). Got us at least to the right train station, but here is the clincher, ‘take the stairs out of the station’. Well, thankfully, the train station has two exits, one with stairs, the other with an escalator AND stairs. Pause for a moment and decide which exit you would take. Refer to picture by river to see where the further directions led us. Of course the exit we should have taken was the one with the escalators. Still, we made it in the end. The other thing I liked about the train station was some of the names, didn’t realise the classic Australian icon was commemorated as a train station in the Czech republic. Chris and Dean had stayed at the same hotel as we did, and made the most of the bar during their stay, sadly we took things a little more quietly with that respect, but it was a fantastic relaxing weekend for us none the less.
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