Weekend in Prague
A weekend in Prague
The number of vacations is decreasing, and the number of promotions for tickets is growing. I decided to try a new approach for myself. Taking a laptop at work, we went to live with friends in Krakow for a week. I work during the day, we walk in the evening. Charm. Since the neighboring country is the Czech Republic, a weekend visit to Prague was destined even before we bought tickets to Krakow. The issue of getting to Prague was very difficult. As a result, the best option was to go there - blah blah car (13 euros each), and back by night bus (19 euros each).
On the road
Since we are abroad without roaming, it will not be easy to contact the driver in an emergency. Moreover, the driver himself was in roaming. At a predetermined place, we searched for each other for 30 minutes.
At least because instead of a girl in a black dress and a guy in a blue t-shirt with a black backpack, there was only a guy in a blue t-shirt without a backpack. The journey took 6.5 hours. We arrived after midnight, we didn’t have time to take the metro, but we successfully took advantage of the free Uber taxi ride, which is issued for referral registration. True, they used it the second time, the first time they ordered a car to the wrong place, for which 50 UAH were charged from us) The woman at the hotel reception asked for our "That's it, both passports" and was very surprised when we had not two, but three). At the hotel we had a feeling that cannot be described in Russian. This feeling when you want to see a new city and country as soon as possible, but first you need to sleep, then eat, and only then start sightseeing. The first time I remember such a feeling was in Georgia.
Foretaste of tomorrow
The hotel was located on the outskirts of the city, but had two advantages, personal amenities and the best breakfasts) You had to take the metro to the center, the first acquaintance with the country began with a per-minute metro fare. It was necessary to determine how long it would take you to go to the center and buy the appropriate ticket, but the board with information about the next train hangs below on the platform out of sight. There are three time options, 30 minutes, 90 minutes, all day. You need to throw a change into the coin acceptor and press one of about 12 buttons. We figured out the purpose of all the buttons for a long time. Whether we figured it out correctly remains a mystery, since we never ran into the controllers. They would tell us exactly what the correct answer was. But it looked like the truth.
We left somewhere in the center. Now it was necessary to change money, Prague is famous for cheating tourists at exchange offices, so you need to change where one of your friends advised you.
We have such exchanges marked on the map. On the way, we came across a Hameleys store, in which a large teddy bear and, it seems, Cinderella were strenuously beckoning us.
Remember Duncan's toy store from Home Alone. We are in something similar. Childhood is back! We built a city from Minecraft cubes, we worked on excavators,
shooting at targets, changing sizes on the floor of the magic house, carelessly flying down the steep pipe connecting the floors and much more, as if there was no time.
Having exchanged euros for crowns, we set off along the cultural route. Prague really impressed us with the size of the old city. After looking at the chimes and the central square, we went to the museum. To be honest, we don't usually go to Museums because we like more active activities, but this one was an exception.
We started on the second floor. On this floor there were mostly traditional fixtures from different times. I had no idea how many varieties of devices to increase vitality are in this world. I liked the exhibits on the third floor less, as they were mainly aimed at rudeness and pain, although there were also quite funny things there. Going down to the first floor, a long black-and-white movie with meaning was waiting for us.
The film was about a cunning doctor who abuses his profession in relation to patients, and his wife, who, as a sign of revenge, spun with a maid and butler. Yes, the Museum of the History of Sex Machines was worth its 500 crowns (9 euros each). Not far from the museum there was also a museum of the history of Apple, but against the background of the previous one, its visit was not promised to be so interesting, but they handed over an apple for free.
In the city center, water prices were 5 times more expensive than in the markets on the outskirts. I wanted to drink wildly, but to buy some water for 50 UAH instead of 9 somehow the toad crushed. As a result, our thoughts materialized and in front of us on the pavement was a sealed bottle of water with a sports cap. The main thing is that thoughts did not materialize during a visit to the third floor of the museum) There are somehow few people in the city itself.
There are a lot of them when approaching the Charles Bridge. Moreover, there is a clear crowd moving in your direction, but there is no such crowd from the side of the city, as if they are dissolving in the city. The bridge itself can be described in one long word - cool! And in general the mood was at its best, in Prague everything can be described by the above word. On the other side of the bridge, a restaurant was waiting for us, where we were to get acquainted with Czech cuisine.
The first day we devoted to unfiltered Krusovice, dumplings, various meats and gravies, as well as soup in bread. I won't say what it was called, but it was delicious. Lunch cost about 20 euros. Prague Castle is located on this bank. Entrance to the territory is free. On the territory of the complex there are various interesting things to visit, but for the money. We thought about visiting St. Vitus Cathedral, but the queue was so long that I was afraid that life would not be long enough to see it end. If you watched the movie eurotour, the episode about the Louvre, then the reality is significantly underestimated there. In the end, we just walked around the area. There is also a Golden Lane with many souvenir shops. Entrance to the street becomes free from 17:00, but the shops on this street are also closed. Since the sellers are interested in sales, the shops continue to be open for some more time.
We were there at about 17:00, in the end we decided not to buy a ticket for the entrances, since everything will close in 20 minutes, and the street will open.
Despite the fact that we did not go inside the sights, we still liked walking around the territory of Prague Castle. Castles are good, but gardens are even better. Not far from the castle were the Voyanov Gardens with cozy green grass and walking peacocks.
I have always said: If you want to improve your garden, add a peacock. Lying on the grass, our legs rested. Fun fact, but this time we saw a peacock sneezing again. It seems that this is not such a rare phenomenon - a sneezing peacock. For a break, a small cozy park just right.
Not far from the park there is the narrowest street in Prague, with a traffic light that you need to switch if you are moving along it.
The street is really narrow) By the way, an interesting point is that real traffic lights on the roads of Prague often switch to green for only three seconds, which is not enough even if you walk at a very fast pace.
We had general plans, I read guidebooks that said that it was necessary to allocate 10 days to Prague. We decided in two, but in fact fit in one (probably 10 days, this is taking into account the queue at St. Vitus Cathedral). From the street we moved to look at the painted wall of John Lennon.
From which we went to the temple where there is a statue of young Jesus. When we entered, organ music just started playing, and the composition that everyone probably knows sounds something like this: “Tada-da there there there, Tada-da tum-tum-tum”, I hope you understand) After listening to the composition and after seeing the statue, we moved to the Petrin Gardens.
For some reason, everyone went to meet us from top to bottom, and we constantly went up a steep mountain.
It seemed suspicious to me back then. The next day, on the Internet, we subtracted that basically everyone takes the funicular up. This is called “But we didn’t notice the elephant. ” From the park there were magnificent views of the whole of Prague, shrouded in sunset rays. True, the sunset was behind us, but we saw it from the reflection in the windows.
We both rested and walked in the park, the park is simply immense in size and, in fact, consists of many connected parks. Connections are conditional, they are not visible to the eye. We left the park somewhere far away from the center. Across the bridge from us was the Dancing House.
We were already determined to move to eat at the cafe recommended to us, but along the way we discovered the Prague Islands and had to interrupt our trip to visit the island. Fortunately, the island was not big, but cozy. We left the second island the next day, on which there was so little left. Many sailed from the island on catamarans of various shapes. Basically, these were retro cars, on which kerosene lamps glowing in the dark hung. It was romantic and magical at the same time. And yet I wanted to eat. We soon reached the Three Lions Restaurant, if I understood its name correctly.
Prague cuisine is unique. Fed up with a belly. It was our late dinner, with an hour left until midnight. We had to stop our wanderings at this place and start a long journey to the hotel while the metro was running.
But the road to the metro was through the night center, I want to note that even at night in Prague there are exactly the same number of tourists on the streets as during the day. The copious number of ancient streets completely absorbs the crowds, so that there is enough space for everyone. But our GPS suffered a fiasco, its error turned out to be greater than the location of the neighboring streets, as a result, it was constantly mistaken. At midnight we returned to our hotel. So passed our first day in this magical city.
The return bus left at 23:05, so the whole second day was at our disposal. On the way from the hotel to the metro, we found a sealed Twix. With the finds, we were completely pearled. We took the metro to the very end and ended up in the Vyshegrad area.
Apparently, it used to be a separate medieval town. At the exit, we expected to see a large fortress, but instead it turned out to be an immense building of the congress.
We have to admit that this is the largest and only congress building we have seen. Fortunately, the fortress was not far away. We went to Prague quite lightly - with a half-empty backpack of small hand luggage. In order not to return before the bus to the outskirts of the hotel, we took it with us and deposited it in the first Visegrad store that came across. It's a pity there was no one in the congress building, I would be pleased if my luggage was guarded by a whole congress. The area was really cozy, quiet and peaceful.
There were hardly any people in the morning. It was possible to calmly walk everywhere admiring the views from the castle walls to the serene river and the city. On the territory there was a beautiful temple with paid entrance. What I don't understand is the entrance fee to the temple.
Early visitors with glasses of beer were already sitting on the summer terrace of one cafe.
I have a stereotype about Prague that they always have a beer at every meal. When you see it during the day, you somehow perceive it in a usual way, but beer for breakfast is interesting. From Vysehrad we walked towards the center on foot. The city gradually woke up, the streets came to life, until we reached one of the islands, music was already playing with might and main and tourists were hanging out. The glades of the island were filled with vacationers, mostly sexual minorities. On the island, just infinitely delicious ice cream was sold, it’s a pity that it won’t fit into the stomach forever. After lunch in the center, we moved to the opposite bank, where we had the still unexplored Letensky Gardens. However, I had to climb the mountain again. On the mountain is a huge metronome, counting the moments of history. From the metronome you want to go to the museum, you want further to the gardens. We are more in the gardens, having chosen a greener clearing for ourselves, we made a halt for ourselves.
That's what Prague has great respect for, for a large number of gardens in the city. If you feel that you are tired - choose the nearest garden and roll forward into the clearing. Then it’s convenient, if you want to bask in the sun, if you want to cool off in the shade. With our weather, we chose the second option. Probably, every tourist in Prague goes on a boat trip along the river, we were no exception. Instead of the stated hour with a footnote of 50 minutes, the boat sailed for 43 minutes at such a speed that sometimes it seemed as if it was sailing in the other direction. The whole procedure was very lulling. The advantage of this tour is that the speakers talk about the names of attractions and a brief introduction to them.
Having unloaded from the boat, we discovered for ourselves another area that we had miraculously missed yesterday, called Stare Mesto. One of the attractions is the synagogue, of course with a paid entrance.
Having explored this district, we went to a toy store, in which one of the sections for cleaning was closed yesterday. It was an aqua section with different water experiments. We left the store a little wet, but happy. It was getting late in the evening, and to save time they arranged a snack at McDonald's. By the way, it's cool that they also have Big Tasty on the menu. In fact, we had only seen him before, if I'm not mistaken. Ours tasted better.
There was a crowd in the central square watching the show. In the center of the crowd stood a fakir or something like that.
I won't spoil it, but it was very funny. I think he does this show a lot, it was around 7:00 pm. On one of the inconspicuous streets last night they saw a banner about some unique light show.
Tickets cost from 6 euros per person. There were no bad reviews on the Internet, and in general there were almost no reviews.
We decided to find out what it is. The hall was not at all large, with a light-absorbing canvas stretched across the center. The lights went out, it was completely dark, two guys with ultraviolet lamps came on stage. So you believe in magic? You MUST attend this show. This is something similar to sand painting, only here the pictures were obtained from the imprints of absorbed light on the canvas, gradually fading away. We tried to take a couple of photos, but modern technology is not able to capture the magic. The show is called Light Art Show, ticketshttp://www. lightartshow. cz/ bought here. We already had the impression about Prague that the city is saturated with magic, and then this show completed the picture.
The last couple of hours we spent visiting daytime attractions in night colors. Crossing the Charles Bridge on the way back, we were caught by a gorgeous ten-minute fireworks display.
We were at the right time, in the right place.
I don’t know who and how many thousand euros invested in this salute, but I only saw this a couple of times, and the last time was about 15 years ago, when the office under our house arranged a grand corporate party. Reaching the bus, we set off on our overnight trip back to Krakow. This is what the weekend was like. At the end of the story, only one thing can be said - PRAGUE WE LOVE YOU!! !
Trip Information
Date of travel: 12.08. 2016 - 15.08. 2016
Trip type: Weekend
Duration: 2 full days
Visa: Obtained on my own for Portuguese travel
Transport: Bla-Bla-Car (outbound) + FlixBus (back)
Hotels: Hotel Brilliant
Excursions: All by yourself
Difficulty of trip: 4/10 (Below average) Weekend in Prague
