This weekend, David and I flew to the Czech Republic to spend a few days in Prague. As usual, we took the earliest flight possible to have a full three days abroad. Luckily, we’ve both gotten pretty good at sleeping on planes and we were out before the flight even took off at 7:00.
We landed a couple of hours later and took a taxi to our hotel, the Ventana. We loved our hotel! The staff was so friendly and helpful, and the location could not have been any better. It was directly behind the Church of Our Lady before Tyn in the Old Town Square on Celetna Street, first a Bohemian trading route and then the royal procession route for coronations in the 1300s. And the rooms were huge! Our suite had a living room downstairs and then a loft above with skylights, a giant bathroom, and a cool canopy bed.
After checking in, we needed brunch! We walked to the Bakeshop, a great bakery just off the square known for its sourdough. David had the potato leek soup with sourdough bread and I had a sourdough bagel with vegetable spread and an American-style brownie for dessert.
Then we walked to the Old Town Hall and climbed to the top of the tower for some great views of the Old Town area. Very little has been built in the Old Town since the late 18th century, so it’s pretty neat to compare our photos to old paintings and see that the square looks pretty much exactly the same!
We made it back down from the gallery just in time to see the Astronomical Clock go off at the hour. The clock was designed in the late 15th century and it’s rumored that the clockmaker was blinded afterwards to prevent him from recreating his masterpiece elsewhere (just like with the Russian church architects – harsh)!
The clock is practically impossible to read. Its purpose was to display the orbit of the sun and moon around the Earth (since back in the day everyone believed the Earth was the center of the universe). The outer ring tells time, but it’s old Bohemian time. The third ring of the clock with Roman numerals tells time as we know it. And the clock is painted blue to represent periods of daylight and the movements of the sun and moon through the 12 signs of the zodiac. Really confusing! Each hour, the figure of Death, a skeleton, chimes a bell and then the apostles appear one-by-one. Last, a trumpeter at the top of the tower plays a song. The show was okay, but we were expecting something more like the Glockenspiel in Munich. It was a bit anticlimactic.
We then walked to Josefov, the Jewish quarter that was once the small ghetto where Jews were confined. We bought a tour package and started off at the Pinkas Synagogue, which is a memorial to the over 77,000 Jewish Czechoslovakians that were killed during the Holocaust. The names of the victims cover the interior walls.
The synagogue led to the Old Jewish Cemetery outside. For over 300 years, this small piece of land was the only burial ground for Jews. There are 12,000 gravestones squished together but over 100,000 people buried in the area, which means people were buried up to 10 layers deep. Next to the cemetery is the Ceremonial Hall where the Jewish Burial Society artifacts are stored. We also visited the Klausen Synagogue before crossing the Vltava River to the Little Quarter.
We crossed using the Charles Bridge, Prague’s most famous landmark, modeled after Rome’s Ponte Sant’Angelo. The statues lining the sides did remind us a lot of Bernini’s statues lining the Roman bridge.
Saturday morning, we woke up bright and early for our bike ride out to Karlstein Castle.
The good news is 1) it turns out riding a bike is just like riding a bike; once you learn, you never forget and 2) the distance from the city center to the castle was only 22 miles, not 30. Whew!
Karlstein Castle is a medieval castle retreat hidden away in the woods above a narrow valley. Charles IV had it built in the mid-14th century as a country retreat and treasury for the crown jewels. Today, the jewels are stored elsewhere and only the floor with the audience hall and king’s bedchamber is open for viewing.
We had lunch in the village in the shadow of the castle, where we filled up on carbs! David had a giant potato pancake stuffed with spicy meats and I had the beef goulash with bread dumplings. On our way back down the valley, we stopped for kolaches. Central Texas is home to a large Czech community near La Grange, so Katie introduced us to kolaches years ago in college. It was pretty cool to be able to try them locally. In the Czech Republic, they’re shaped more like pizzas but the taste is the same. I think I may even like the Texas version better, since you’re not left with fruitless crust at the end.
David just got a new camera as his early birthday present, so we wandered around the city taking some night shots.
When we got back to the Old Town Square, the place was packed for the opening night of the Easter Market.
The Easter Market was a lot like the European Christmas Markets we love. There were trinket stands set up around the square selling authentic goods like hand-painted Easter eggs, beer steins, Bohemian crystal, and wooden marionette dolls. For dinner, we chose local specialties of roasted pig and langose. Langose is fried dough, like pizza bread, topped with garlic butter, cheese, and ketchup. It was delicious! For dessert, we had trdlo, or trdelnik. It’s a donut-like pastry in the shape of a large bracelet covered in sugar, nuts, and toffee. While we ate, we listened to an all-girls choir sing Easter songs from the stage.
On our last day in the city, we had breakfast at the Café Louvre in New Town and walked back across the river and uphill to Prague Castle, in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest castle in the world.
We didn’t have time to see everything, so we did the shortened castle tour. Our first stop was St. Vitus’s Cathedral, where Good King Wenceslas is entombed. Also inside are the crown jewels, which hardly ever make an appearance outside their hiding place.
Next was the Royal Palace, which was built in 1135 for the Bohemian princes. The spark that set off the 30 Years’ War happened here when more than 100 Protestants marched into the palace and threw two Catholic governors out a window 50 feet above the ground. Amazingly, the governors landed in a dung heap and survived! But that was enough to set off a huge war in Europe.
We also saw the ancient prison, Dalibor Tower. That place was truly awful. Most prisoners were kept in tiny dungeon rooms and left to starve to death, or wait out their executions. We also saw St. George’s Basilica, where St. Ludmilla is buried. The Czechs have a bloody history involving terrible royal families just like the Russians. Ludmilla was strangled by her daughter-in-law and Wenceslas was murdered by his brother inside St. Vitus’s Cathedral!
On our way out, we walked down Golden Lane. This is a picturesque street where the castle guards lived. Some well-known writers lived there also, like Franz Kafka. The brightly colored houses are now mostly gift-shops. A few have been reconstructed to give visitors an idea of what the homes were like hundreds of years ago.
We continued walking uphill from the Castle to the Strahov Monastery. We saw the library, which is 800 years old and home to thousands of books. Outside the main hall there are display cases filled with unique findings, a pre-cursor to the modern museum. The cases contain everything from armory to a narwhal’s tusk, which was believed to be that of a unicorn.
The monks still live at the monastery and also brew their own beer and wine! So for lunch, we grabbed a table in the small restaurant next to the library. David tried a couple of different beers while we ate. And then it was time to book it all the way back downhill and across the river to pick up our bags and head to the airport.
We landed a couple of hours later and took a taxi to our hotel, the Ventana. We loved our hotel! The staff was so friendly and helpful, and the location could not have been any better. It was directly behind the Church of Our Lady before Tyn in the Old Town Square on Celetna Street, first a Bohemian trading route and then the royal procession route for coronations in the 1300s. And the rooms were huge! Our suite had a living room downstairs and then a loft above with skylights, a giant bathroom, and a cool canopy bed.
Church of our Lady before Tyn
After checking in, we needed brunch! We walked to the Bakeshop, a great bakery just off the square known for its sourdough. David had the potato leek soup with sourdough bread and I had a sourdough bagel with vegetable spread and an American-style brownie for dessert.
Then we walked to the Old Town Hall and climbed to the top of the tower for some great views of the Old Town area. Very little has been built in the Old Town since the late 18th century, so it’s pretty neat to compare our photos to old paintings and see that the square looks pretty much exactly the same!
We made it back down from the gallery just in time to see the Astronomical Clock go off at the hour. The clock was designed in the late 15th century and it’s rumored that the clockmaker was blinded afterwards to prevent him from recreating his masterpiece elsewhere (just like with the Russian church architects – harsh)!
The clock is practically impossible to read. Its purpose was to display the orbit of the sun and moon around the Earth (since back in the day everyone believed the Earth was the center of the universe). The outer ring tells time, but it’s old Bohemian time. The third ring of the clock with Roman numerals tells time as we know it. And the clock is painted blue to represent periods of daylight and the movements of the sun and moon through the 12 signs of the zodiac. Really confusing! Each hour, the figure of Death, a skeleton, chimes a bell and then the apostles appear one-by-one. Last, a trumpeter at the top of the tower plays a song. The show was okay, but we were expecting something more like the Glockenspiel in Munich. It was a bit anticlimactic.
We then walked to Josefov, the Jewish quarter that was once the small ghetto where Jews were confined. We bought a tour package and started off at the Pinkas Synagogue, which is a memorial to the over 77,000 Jewish Czechoslovakians that were killed during the Holocaust. The names of the victims cover the interior walls.
The synagogue led to the Old Jewish Cemetery outside. For over 300 years, this small piece of land was the only burial ground for Jews. There are 12,000 gravestones squished together but over 100,000 people buried in the area, which means people were buried up to 10 layers deep. Next to the cemetery is the Ceremonial Hall where the Jewish Burial Society artifacts are stored. We also visited the Klausen Synagogue before crossing the Vltava River to the Little Quarter.
David in his kippah
Ceremonial Hall
We crossed using the Charles Bridge, Prague’s most famous landmark, modeled after Rome’s Ponte Sant’Angelo. The statues lining the sides did remind us a lot of Bernini’s statues lining the Roman bridge.
We stopped at a small café on Kampa Island, a quiet section of the Little Quarter, so David could have a glass of the local beer, Pilsner Urquell. Then we crossed the island to see the Lennon Peace Wall, a famous graffitied garden wall.
That evening, we had dinner at Bellevue, which came highly recommended from TripAdvisor. David opted for the two course meal, while I went for the full three. There was a five-course menu but that was going to be way too much food! We started with an amuse bouche of a beef ragout-stuffed deep fried olive. I don’t normally like olives, but since it was fried, it was good! I had the homemade ravioli carbonara to start and David had the scallops. My ravioli were swimming in walnut butter and I was warned not to use my knife, but to eat the ravioli whole so the cheese inside wouldn’t run out onto the plate. It was so rich! For our mains, David had the suckling pig and I had the veal loin. His suckling pig was the most tender piece of pork I’ve ever had, but the veal stole the show. It was on a bed of creamy potatoes with onions caramelized in port and a garlic emulsion. For dessert, I managed to finish off crème brulee with whiskey cream and a chocolate cigar. I didn’t feel bad about any of it, because I knew I would burn it all off the next day!
Saturday morning, we woke up bright and early for our bike ride out to Karlstein Castle.
For those of you that I talked to before the trip, you know that I was really, really nervous about this excursion for a couple of reasons. First, it’s literally been 14 years since I’ve been on a bike. I didn’t even know if I would remember how to ride a bike, let alone trek out to the forest on one! Second, the ride was scheduled to be about 4.5 hours long and 30 miles start-to-finish. Now, since I joined my first gym a couple of years ago, I’ve been pretty good at keeping up my workouts. I even joined a couch-to-5k running club that meets once a week during lunch.
However!
I was just back in Texas for work for three weeks, which totally messed up my routine. I basically worked, ate my way through Austin and El Paso, and hung out with friends and family. So my workout schedule went to hell. I got out and played basketball with some coworkers one night, which turned out to be my only workout. So the week before Prague after I got back from Texas, I did some spinning to try and prep. But I wasn’t sure that would be enough…
The good news is 1) it turns out riding a bike is just like riding a bike; once you learn, you never forget and 2) the distance from the city center to the castle was only 22 miles, not 30. Whew!
Look Mom, I'm riding a bike!
I eventually took off the helmet and even stood up
22 miles was still a lot for us to handle, though. Honestly the worst part was the bruising on our bums! Our arses were sooooo sore from sitting on that tiny bike seat for 4 hours. We did take a few breaks in some of the small villages along the river to take pictures and learn some history, but it was a lot of riding on cobblestone streets or in the woods, where the paths didn’t exist so we were bouncing up and down on uneven, rocky ground.
But it was still a lot of fun! It turns out Prague is a big party city and none of the other tourists wanted to get out of bed early on a Saturday, so David and I were the only ones that showed up for the bike ride. So we ended up on our own private tour with a guide and a guide-in-training. And the weather was gorgeous! All weekend it was sunny and in the mid-60s. Overall it was a great way to see the city and the Czech countryside.
Vltava River with cinder blocks from the iron curtain in the middle
Karlstein Castle is a medieval castle retreat hidden away in the woods above a narrow valley. Charles IV had it built in the mid-14th century as a country retreat and treasury for the crown jewels. Today, the jewels are stored elsewhere and only the floor with the audience hall and king’s bedchamber is open for viewing.
We had lunch in the village in the shadow of the castle, where we filled up on carbs! David had a giant potato pancake stuffed with spicy meats and I had the beef goulash with bread dumplings. On our way back down the valley, we stopped for kolaches. Central Texas is home to a large Czech community near La Grange, so Katie introduced us to kolaches years ago in college. It was pretty cool to be able to try them locally. In the Czech Republic, they’re shaped more like pizzas but the taste is the same. I think I may even like the Texas version better, since you’re not left with fruitless crust at the end.
Thankfully, we took the train back into Prague. Once we got back to the city center, we walked to the Powder Gate, one of the original entrances to Old Town, and the adjoining Royal Court which is now the Municipal House used for exhibitions.
David just got a new camera as his early birthday present, so we wandered around the city taking some night shots.
When we got back to the Old Town Square, the place was packed for the opening night of the Easter Market.
The Easter Market was a lot like the European Christmas Markets we love. There were trinket stands set up around the square selling authentic goods like hand-painted Easter eggs, beer steins, Bohemian crystal, and wooden marionette dolls. For dinner, we chose local specialties of roasted pig and langose. Langose is fried dough, like pizza bread, topped with garlic butter, cheese, and ketchup. It was delicious! For dessert, we had trdlo, or trdelnik. It’s a donut-like pastry in the shape of a large bracelet covered in sugar, nuts, and toffee. While we ate, we listened to an all-girls choir sing Easter songs from the stage.
On our last day in the city, we had breakfast at the Café Louvre in New Town and walked back across the river and uphill to Prague Castle, in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest castle in the world.
We didn’t have time to see everything, so we did the shortened castle tour. Our first stop was St. Vitus’s Cathedral, where Good King Wenceslas is entombed. Also inside are the crown jewels, which hardly ever make an appearance outside their hiding place.
Next was the Royal Palace, which was built in 1135 for the Bohemian princes. The spark that set off the 30 Years’ War happened here when more than 100 Protestants marched into the palace and threw two Catholic governors out a window 50 feet above the ground. Amazingly, the governors landed in a dung heap and survived! But that was enough to set off a huge war in Europe.
We also saw the ancient prison, Dalibor Tower. That place was truly awful. Most prisoners were kept in tiny dungeon rooms and left to starve to death, or wait out their executions. We also saw St. George’s Basilica, where St. Ludmilla is buried. The Czechs have a bloody history involving terrible royal families just like the Russians. Ludmilla was strangled by her daughter-in-law and Wenceslas was murdered by his brother inside St. Vitus’s Cathedral!
On our way out, we walked down Golden Lane. This is a picturesque street where the castle guards lived. Some well-known writers lived there also, like Franz Kafka. The brightly colored houses are now mostly gift-shops. A few have been reconstructed to give visitors an idea of what the homes were like hundreds of years ago.
We continued walking uphill from the Castle to the Strahov Monastery. We saw the library, which is 800 years old and home to thousands of books. Outside the main hall there are display cases filled with unique findings, a pre-cursor to the modern museum. The cases contain everything from armory to a narwhal’s tusk, which was believed to be that of a unicorn.
The monks still live at the monastery and also brew their own beer and wine! So for lunch, we grabbed a table in the small restaurant next to the library. David tried a couple of different beers while we ate. And then it was time to book it all the way back downhill and across the river to pick up our bags and head to the airport.
To see all of the pictures from our trip, click here.
