Europe 2018: Prague

July 11, 2019

Europe 2018: Prague

Europe 2018 Trip

Amsterdam --> Berlin --> Dresden --> Prague --> Munich --> Nuremberg --> Brussels --> Liege --> Bruges --> Amsterdam

Tayler's thoughts are in blue, Rebecca's thoughts in black.

PRAGUE

Prague was a fascinating stop on our trip. The best part were the cheap performances. They must have quite a reputation for small shows and seemed like they have quite an efficient system down. Instead of watching the entire ballet, Swan Lake, for example, many venues offer a showing of the Highlights of Swan Lake. Similarly, musical performances seemed carefully selected to require only small groups of performers and shorter works. Last, they focused on works that most cheap tourists like us would be familiar with but excited about. Even with those efficiencies, it was incredibly fun to enjoy a show. We attended a performance of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, is only like 45 minutes long, and they played it with only 3 violinists and a cellist, I think. The also lumped in an organ piece, Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, as well as some popular vocal soloist performances. The venue was surprisingly small and intimate--maybe 100 seats was all, and we were on the third row. It just felt fun and sophisticated. I’m sure the performers were part-time amateurs, but to the untrained ear, they were spectacular. Also important, even though we were in our nikes and vacation clothes, it wasn’t fancy enough to feel out of place or self conscious. I think we paid about $30 per ticket for that and maybe $35-40 per ticket to the highlights of Swan Lake. As for Swan Lake, it was fun, but I got so tired--even just watching the highlights, haha.
Prague has these fun treats called a trdelnik made at shops all along the popular tourist routes. They are basically a crescent dough wrapped around a rolling pin, covered with cinnamon and sugar and, optionally, filled with ice cream or nutella, dipped in chocolate or other permutations. I had one, but I wanted to eat them every time I walked past a shop.
Prague has been a place where different religions clashed badly in the past, so there is a lot of interesting history. We didn’t know much of it, so as with so many other cities on this trip, we were happy to learn as we went listening to my man Rick Steves. Prague has a Jewish district and a number of pretty synagogues, something that we didn’t encounter on most of our other city tours.
There’s a long, pretty bridge that leads from the plaza and tourist shops across the Vltava River to the other side, where there are more shops and, upon on a tall hill, Prague Castle. After reading up on reviews, we elected not to pay for entrance into the non-free parts of the Castle. The castle is massive, but it’s been built and expanded in spurts, so it doesn’t feel cohesive and majestic after the first few sections. It feels a lot less extravagant and more economical than other castles, so there’s a reason the advertising focus seems to be that it’s the biggest castle, not that it’s the most beautiful or ornate or historical. There is a pretty cathedral, St. Vitus Cathedral inside the palace complex. It’s very traditional Gothic style with flying buttresses, stained glass windows, and pointed arches.
Prague was so fun! It almost felt a little like Italy to me. I loved the cobblestone streets and the beautiful buildings. You could see the history in the buildings, some with pastel colors and more rococo styles, some older, some newer. Tay and I both love walking these old european cities and having them open up often to squares. That was definitely Prague, though Prague felt like a big version of that--it was a bigger city, but it just felt packed with beauty and history and things to see. Rick Steve’s walking podcast was a great way to see the city and learn about the history.
The Prague castle was a let down. I thought from looking up at it, and from being outside of it, that it was a ginormous castle. But really, it’s a few old churches with some buildings added on and added on so that it’s like a square outline building encompassing the churches. Nothing like Versailles. :) We almost bought tickets to get in, but luckily Tayler thought we should see what we can that’s free and see if we do want to pay for anything else. We ended up being able to see the inside of the old main church and a walked around the interior of the square building lining the old castles, and decided we saw enough that we didn’t want to pay for the other things. Probably my favorite thing about going up to the castle was the view--that’s where you can see a lot of the old rooftops.
We had an airbnb in Prague that we were pretty excited about, but in reality it wasn’t as good as we were hoping. It was still fun, though! There was a loft bed that actually made me a little nervous to sleep. And there was a washer, so who can complain?!
It was hard at first to figure out where to purchase the tram tickets for Prague. There were these little tobacco stands at the tram stations, but we found out they didn’t sell tickets--they told us we needed to go back to the train station to purchase them or find a stop with a little machine (the only one we ended up finding was at the stop by our airbnb).
We tried goulash in Prague, because that’s one of the “native” foods we saw on Google and the place we tried was rated well online. When we went in, their menu was all different and it was buffet style, but we couldn’t see prices for anything. We only had so much Prague money on us, so we ended up having to ask the front server how much we could afford and go with that. I got beef goulash with a side of potatoes, and Tay got beef goulash (beef was recommended as the best) with dumplings. At first I was jealous that he was getting the dumplings (they told me there was dairy in them, so I couldn’t have those), but then I saw what he had and was pretty happy with my potatoes. I didn’t love the goulash, it was fine--I just probably wouldn’t get it again. It filled us up though! Basically tasted like beef stew, but you had to eat it from a plate instead of a bowl. ;)
We had talked about what type of souvenir we’d like from out trip as we traveled and had been looking around, and we both thought a painting would be pretty fun. As Prague was about the middle stop in our trip, we thought it might be good to get something so we didn’t end up with nothing. We found a pretty good souvenir shop that was filled with the tourist paintings that were super cheap, debated for a few minutes in the store about it, left to see if we could find something better, and ended up racing back to it by the end of the night to grab it before the store closed and we left Prague (the next morning). Even though it was a little touristy, we love the one we got up in our apartment.
Walking in old-town Prague was my favorite part of Prague. I loved all the restaurants, squares, and beautiful buildings and roads. It was gorgeous.