You know how you have all the good intentions to do something for day after day, but the moment never seems to present itself? That explains how you don’t know why or how I’m writing to you from a hotel room in Prague, Czechia.
I suppose you could call this a continuation of the “long weekend away” we began last year in Amsterdam. Now the children are grown up and can largely look after themselves, we can escape from time to time.
I’m not entirely sure where the idea to visit Prague came from. We scouted out European cities a little while ago – and somehow narrowed it down. The process might have been no more cerebral than throwing a dart backwards over your shoulder at a dart-board.
I would love to say we prepared for this break. In reality, the entire sum of our preparations were to wash some clothes, fold them into a suitcase last night, and watch a couple of Youtube videos about Prague, made by local influencers (they were very good too). A car turned up at 5am this morning, whisked us to the airport, and by 10am local time we had arrived. Oh, how the world has become smaller!
This was the first time either of us had travelled without checking bags in – my other half bought new carry-on bags last week, promising that they would fit in the overhead lockers. Knowing my luck, I wondered all the way to the airport if there would be enough room for everybody’s bag if everybody had a carry-on bag. Thankfully they didn’t.
British Airways served us a small piece of flapjack and a bottle of water en-route. I was quite looking forward to a Tom Kerridge sandwich made from gold plated cheese and decade matured pickles (or some other such nonsense, as advertised in the in-flight magazine). It didn’t appear to be an actual option – or at least, I didn’t see it get delivered to anybody.
We were met at the airport by a lovely young Czech man who drove us to the hotel – holding up a “Beckett” name-card in the arrivals hall. He taught us the words for “hello”, “please” and “thank you” on our way, and gave advice on which hill top to sit on with a bottle of wine to watch the city and get wrecked.
We dropped our bags at the hotel (a curiosity you might describe as “wonderfully eccentric”), and set off on foot around the older part of Prague.
Wow. Just wow. Such a beautiful city. Art, sculpture, and people everywhere. Colour everywhere. A medieval city somehow brought kicking and screaming into into the modern world.
We circled back to our hotel to try it’s outdoor restaurant for lunch, and I did my usual thing – going straight for local food. In this case “local” meant a “farmer’s plate” – a number of meats, briscuit, dumplings, and pickled cabbage. It was hearty, filling, and really quite wonderful.
I ordered a “large” beer without really thinking about it, and received an arm-workout of a beer – a large German “stein” glass, filled with Staropramen. I don’t usually drink lager, but given we are in the birth place of Pilsner lager, it seemed wrong to do anything else.
After eating and drinking ourselves to a standstill we set off across the city once more. I needed to respond to the call of nature, and spotted a “WC” sign in a side-street. Two minutes later I barely survived a verbal dressing down from an old lady who insisted I pay for the facilities I had just used. While trying to explain that I had no cash yet and would return in 2 minutes, she started screaming abuse in every language except English at me. A local jumped in, put a coin on her counter, and told me to “ignore the crazy old bitch”. I shook his hand, and ran for my life (well.. walked swiftly).
A mile or so further on we spied a tea-shop that looked like it might have walked straight from the 1920s – filled with art deco sculpture and Mucha illustrations. We couldn’t resist it – and spent the next half hour sipping hot drinks and eating enough chocolate cake to slow a healthy Rhinocerous down quiet substantially.
Two miles further – after visiting the river, and circling back through the medieval streets to the old city centre – we arrived back at our hotel and checked in.
The room is really quite wonderful. The window looks out across the square, and the various historic churches. Throngs of people pass by beneath, with the constant murmur and laughter of their conversation. Every culture, nation, and race seems to be represented. Like I said – kind of wonderful.
We’re heading out in a moment to try out the roof-top bar. Watch this space 🙂