The day of my 40th birthday, April 25th 2016, I woke up in Prague feeling ill. My throat was sore and scratchy, making swallowing painful, my nose was congested, and despite sleeping for a good solid chunk of time I was still feeling a bit tired and weak. To top it all off I was still having some stomach troubles that kept me alert for the nearest WC at all times. A day or two later Kat started complaining of some of the same symptoms as well. We've since learned that there was some sort of crud going around at Czocha. Lucky us.
My original plan for the day was to take the early morning train out to Kutna Hora and see the Sedlec bone church. I'd even gone ahead and purchased the tickets the night before, but I was feeling so bad by the time my alarm was about to go off that I decided that staying in bed for a little while longer was a better idea. Kat asked if I wanted to just stay in that day, but I decided we should just power on through and at least see some sites in town. After we were finished showering, shaving, and doing our laundry in the sink we wandered down to breakfast at the hotel. It turned out to be a pretty good buffet so we filled up on sausages, eggs, potatoes, fruit, cereals, coffee, chai, and juices.
Before we got going on site-seeing my first priority was to get rid of the stupid rolling bag. When I asked, the hotel staff suggested we try the Czech post office which had a nearby branch. A few minutes later we thought we had found it and I dragged the bag into a quiet insurance office. They couldn't help me, but they did direct me to the post office across the hall. At the post office the attendant seemed a little confused by my request to ship a large piece of luggage through the mail and warned me that it might be expensive, but at this point just about any price was worth it. She and the other worker cocooned the bag in plastic wrap and slapped a label on it and I gladly paid the hefty charge to see the last of it. A sudden feeling of lightness come over me as I became joyously unburdened and I was ready to conquer Prague.
With our trusty Rick Steves guide to Eastern Europe in hand we finally started our walking tour of Prague. The morning was cold and windy although it was not raining all that hard. The weather turned out to be crazy all day long; there were moments when it would suddenly start snowing, then it would turn sunny, then windy, then snow again, and back to sun. I was glad to have my warmish puffy jacket along with my, but I was really regretting not having a scarf, not just for the warmth, but for the fashion statement as well. I had been noticing that here and in Berlin it seemed everyone had cool-looking scarves, men and women alike. Kat was noticing it too and although she had a warm scarf she felt she needed something a bit more flashy to fit in, and she could really use some gloves because her hands were freezing.
Our first stop was at a little outdoor market on a small square near our hotel. There was a sign for hot spiced wine so we got one for each of us to keep our hands warm. There was also a little kiosk selling these spiral tube cakes we'd seen on a travel show and we were excited to try it. We dubbed them "Cake Holes" and ate one that had been slathered in chocolate frosting. We both felt a little bit more perked up after our wine and pastry.
After a little bit of wandering we came across another open air market filled with arts and crafts. We've come to find that some of our favorite experiences on our trips tend to be wandering random little markets sampling street food and browsing through cheap art. This was no exception. I almost immediately found a soft and warm scarf that was in a color scheme that fit my particular idiom and snatched it up. I wore it non-stop for the next several days. Kat and I also found a small piece of artwork that we liked and that we could pack home without too much trouble. On a corner shop we also found Kat a simple pair of gloves for her cold hands. Then we stopped at a green grocer for some large pea pods Kat wanted to snack on. She paid and picked up the bag by the wrong end, promptly dropping her peas on the ground. She picked them up and ate them anyway, even after she dropped the one she was eating on the ground a second time. It was still early in the day and we already felt very accomplished.
We spent the next several hours site-seeing around Prague. Prague is an amazingly beautiful city and surprisingly walkable. We managed to walk to and see all the major sites within one day and still find some time to relax a little and plan for the next day. Other than the markets I'd say my favorite attractions are the Charles Bridge, the Astronomical Clock, and climbing Petrin Hill to the Strahov Monastery. We had a very good beer at the monastery and a nice lunch at a bistro near Kampa Island called Cukrkavalimonada which means "Sugar, Coffee, Lemonade". At lunch over a bowl of beet root soup, a ham and cheese croissant, a salad and some juice cocktails we chatted with a nice couple on vacation from the Bay Area.
We took a long afternoon nap, as we like to do, and woke up ready for a late birthday dinner. The first place we'd considered going to that evening, an interesting sounding Afghan place, turned out to be closed. The second place that sounded good turned out to be way too smokey inside. Not having any backups planned after that we just wandered old town until we found a place that seemed relatively reasonable. Unfortunately we ended up at what turned out to be a kind of tourist trap. It seemed fine at first, as it wasn't smokey and the cellar location had a cool atmosphere. There were even these large pretzels hanging off a little wooden tree in the center of the table as an appetizer so of course we each helped ourselves to one as we waited for the menus. At the time I thought it was a bit odd how stale the pretzel seemed. Later we found out that the pretzels were not complimentary and that no one ever eats the pretzels.
The waiter was nice enough and the main dishes were decent, but the setup was definitely a money grab. In addition to the pretzel trap there was a "cover charge" listed on the back of the menu. Basically they charge you a mandatory 100 crowns for bread and butter, per person, regardless if you want it or not. When it comes out it was a tiny little tasteless roll and a rather large crock of butter. Plus the pretzels cost 50 crowns each. The total bill was still less than any single meal we ate in Berlin, but it was twice the cost of any meal we'd had in Czech Republic up to that point. That feeling of being suckered just kind of tainted the whole experience.
That was our last night in Prague. We had a full itinerary planned for the next day including the morning train to Kutna Hora and then a bus ride to Cesky Krumlov in the afternoon.
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