Prague trip

I’m back from my trip to Prague!

Frankly, it didn’t start off very well. I was supposed to fly from Lyon to Munich, then from Munich to Prague. The original plan was to leave at 12.55pm and to reach Prague at 4.40pm. But upon checking in, I was told that my flight was half an hour late. However, they assured me that I would have enough time to catch my connecting flight, since I had (originally) a little more than an hour (1 hour and 5 minutes to be exact) between the two flights.

So I went through security and waited for my flight...and then they told us that it had been cancelled :/ At first they weren’t even sure, they were telephoning around for information. It turned out that the weather was too bad in Lyon (I did notice when I arrived at the airport that it was terribly misty) and that the plane had landed in Geneva instead. They told us that we could take a bus to Geneva and there, they would put us on other flights to get to our destination.

But in the end (I have no idea why) it didn’t turn out that way; we had to get our luggage and queue up at the Lufthansa (that’s the company I was using) counter to check our options. Since Prague was my final destination, and not Munich, they offered me a direct flight to Prague with Air France, which was leaving at 3.25pm and would arrive in Prague at 5pm. So I ended up arriving only about 20 minutes later than planned.
(The weird thing is that when I checked in with Air France, they told me that I was on the waiting list – what, it isn’t confirmed?! – and that they would let me know at about 3pm. Good thing I did get a seat in the end.)

There are six of us who went on this trip to Prague; two arrived in the morning, and the three others arrived in the afternoon, a few hours earlier than me. Upon reaching Prague, I found that the three of them were waiting for me to arrive before leaving for town. By that time, it was already dark, so we didn’t have much plans for sightseeing that night. So we went to the hotel (one of them had booked it in advance) to leave our stuff and then went out for dinner. We went searching for a Czech restaurant (recommended by the hotel receptionist) but we couldn’t find it and ended up going into another restaurant we came across. (serving Czech food as well)

After dinner we walked a bit and stumbled upon the old town square (Staromestske Namesti). Not knowing where we were, we just took a few photos anyway, since the square was well lighted up (though all the stalls were closed; it was close to midnight) We even passed by the astronomical clock (on the left) but it was too dark to even look at it properly, let alone take a photo. (well, for me, at least :P) We went there again in the daytime, so here are two photos for you to compare:

At the back is Tyn Church

Personally, I find that Tyn Church looks better at night. In the daytime it’s just another building. And here’s a closer view of the astronomical clock:


The next day we went to Wenceslas Square, which is probably the biggest square in Prague (it spans two metro stations!) There are also a lot of shops on either side of the square (it's a "long" square, not a "square" square ;P) At the bottom of the square there is the Christmas market:

See the giant “rolled” pastry on either side? There are stalls selling it all over Prague. They roll the dough on a metal cylinder and slide it off after cooking it. (so yeah, it’s empty inside) The outside is slightly crispy and they roll it in sugar. It is sooo delicious, I still want some! There were also a type of crispy wafer and a sort of pizza (it was the same thing as the fried bread I tried in Hungary, but here there was no translation), but nothing compares! (to the rolled pastry, I mean)

Edit: you can see a picture of the pastry on Yieng's blog, or directly here.

This is the top of Wenceslas Square, looking towards the bottom of the square.

And turning around, we see the national museum and the St Wenceslas statue.

As you can see, we went to the bottom of the square in the daytime, but to the top at night. We didn’t spend the whole day there, though! We went walking along Charles Bridge before returning to the square (not that we knew it was the same square, at first...:P)

Prague Castle and Charles Bridge by night; I took a lot of photos but most of them are rather blurred :/

towards the start of the bridge (on the old town side)

towards the end of the bridge (on the castle side)

The next day (Christmas Day) we walked around a lot, hunting down monuments and taking photos. There were a lot of locals (as well as tourists) walking around as well, and visiting the Christmas market. I didn’t find many of the monuments very interesting or pretty, though, so I’ll pass on the photos.

Here’s another square that we visited both by day and by night. It’s the Republic Square (Namesti Republiky) I think it looks nicer at night simply because it’s Christmas...


You can see the tram lines beside the square...we only used the metro in the beginning, but later we "discovered" the trams and it was a lot better (to me) 'cos we could see where we were going. Once when we were waiting at a tram station, we even had a couple of tourists ask us how to get to their hotel. We didn't know the hotel, but they knew at which stop they needed to get off, and it so happened that I had seen the name of the stop while checking for our destination, so we (I, hehe, since I was the one "in charge of" tram planning) could tell them where to go.

We went to the Prague Castle as well, but I won’t be posting any “close-up” photos, ‘cos I think that the best photos of the castle are from a distance.

On the last day we took the funicular up Petrin Hill, and when we came back down and were looking for a restaurant for lunch, we saw a church and went in. It turns out that it was the church where the Infant Jesus of Prague is kept (the site where I got this information says that it’s world famous; does anyone know about this? ‘Cos I’ve never heard of it before...)

And finally, let’s talk food. Our hotel room came with breakfast included, so every morning we had a buffet breakfast.
There were essentially sausages, ham, eggs and cheese. There was also bread, and of course, stuff like jam and butter. And corn flakes...and I was surprised to see that they had thick yoghurt (or cream cheese, I'm not sure) to go with it, instead of milk. But it was pretty good (I had to add sugar to make it taste nice :P) So we were pretty full after breakfast each day, making us take pretty late lunches.

Here are the dishes from the first night's Czech restaurant:
The Chinese food in Prague is quite cheap (compared to other foods), so we went twice to a Chinese restaurant. Here's the first one...

In fact, we had difficulty finding an open restaurant on the night of the 24th, and this was the one we found after seeing several closed ones. So we just went in as quickly as we could before it could close! It seems that a lot of restaurants close early on Christmas Eve.

We had heard that a lot of the shops in Prague are closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas, so we went to a supermarket to buy food (bread and stuff) for the 25th. It turns out that we should have eaten that on the 24th (right after buying it) because more restaurants were open on the 25th!

Anyway, here are a couple of other dishes from another restaurant we went to:

roast rabbit

beef goulash

The white slices are bread dumplings, supposedly a Czech specialty. But it tastes like "mantou"... :P (which means pretty good, especially with all that sauce!) There were also potato dumplings from the earlier Czech meal; it looks about the same but more yellowish, I find it heavier, so I like it less. Another type of dumpling is the one you can see in the leftmost picture, also from the first Czech restaurant; that one is more like a dumpling and less like a "mantou" :P I believe that it's called Bohemian dumplings. (but I can't really remember the names of the dishes from the first restaurant)

Well, there you go, all in all, it was a good trip, if we forget about the first flight problem. The only small drawback is that it was very cold!! Half the time, our fingers and toes were frozen...which was why we went to McDonalds quite often for coffee! (or hot chocolate for me)

(click on the photos for bigger versions!)