Enjoying some beers in Prague!

Prague – I’ve been wanting to travel here for a while and actually started planning a trip back in September last year, with the intention of attending the Ice Hockey World Championship in April/May. However, due to a few different reasons, I had to scrap those plans and in late June this year, after just talking about it, a plan was made to travel in August, even though we knew the city would be packed with tourists.

I found some cheap flights with Czech Airlines, planned the itinerary, booked cheap accommodation at a place called Jednota hostel, boarded our flight and landed in Prague after a little over a two-hour flight from Dublin.

Stepping outside the airport, we were approached by a girl asking if we needed accommodation and also by a man offering taxi services. We knew of the many issues that Prague have in regards to taxi issues, but managed to negotiate a decent price with the driver (sure probably still too much but no more than what we had paid in Dublin for our ride to the airport) and in the end, our driver ended up being trustworthy and also shared valuable information to us about the city during our ride and even provided us with a map.

Our hostel, Jednota, ended up being a great choice for us – it was cheap (private room with two beds for 13€ each per night), clean and in a good location. As we were unable to check in straight away, we dropped off our bags and set off to explore the city. Our first stop was the Old Town Square, home to the famous “Astronomical Clock” built in the 15th-century, showing the revolutions of the Sun, Moon, and stars. Despite its popularity, we found the clock somewhat overrated, however, a funny thing did happen during one of the evenings were were there, as we were nearby and only 5 minutes to go to the hour, we stayed to watch the clock and the tourists. However, the hour passed and nothing happened. There was some laughter and whistling…..quite entertaining. 

Next, we made our way to Charles Bridge (Karlùv Most), which connects the lesser town with old town and is always filled with pedestrians and vendors, trying to sell you items you may not want.

After crossing the bridge we decided that it was time for our first beer (one of many more to come). Since the taxi driver had told us that a beer shouldn’t cost more than around 30 Czech Koruna we passed the big tourist bars and found a really nice quiet bar and had one beer each for 19 Coruna, that would be around 0.60€…..not to bad at all!

Well, after a really good beer we made our way back to the hostel, checked in and then went to Welceslas Square (Václavské námìstí). This is the bustling heart of Prague, a long (750m) and wide street (60m) containing lots of shops, cinemas, hotels, restaurants and cafés. This has been the home to many of the biggest scenes in Czech history. For example it was here that in 1969 a 19th year old university student Jan Palach burnt himself to death in protest against the Warsaw Pact invasion. It was also here that it was proclaimed that Communism in the Czech Republic was over. We finished our day with a traditional Gulash for dinner, enjoyed a few more local beers and went back to the hostel pretty early.

The next day we started by going up to the Old Town Hall (the one with the clock on it), which offers panoramic views of the city. We headed up to Prague Castle (Hradčany) which apparently is supposed to be the largest ancient castle in the world (570 m long and on average 128 m wide). We didn’t enter the castle but choose to appreciate it from the outside as we didn’t feel like exploring all the museums inside. The weather by now had really warmed up and it was time to stop for a couple of beers, sitting in the shade and just people watching, followed by a walk to one of the islands on the river, Slovanskÿ Ostrov, were we sat writing postcards home. Obviously, relaxing for so long makes you thirsty, and hungry as well. Walked to U Fleků a small brewery established in 1499, we had a couple of local beers and some traditional food.

The only museum that we visited in Prague was the Museum of Communism, which gave us a perspective on Czech history and included a movie they had done which contained parts of the most important dates in Czech history with the the Soviets and the big demonstrations in 1989.

We finished our night with a dinner at El Gaucho, an Argentinian restaurant before we returned to our hostel, finished writing our postcards, drank a few more some beers and also tasted Absinth for the first time during our trip. This is a spirit of 70% alcohol, which you drink with a spoon with sugar that u pour some absinth over, you then set the sugar on fire and wait until it caramelises and the fire dies out, the stir it all together and drink it. Supposedly Absinth gives you hallucinations because of the wormwood in it, however ours must have been without it though as we didn’t feel anything (I ended up getting a bottle to take home with me).

The next day, nursing a hangover, we scouted were we have to pick our car up the next day, and after returning to Old Town Square, we decided to kill off our hangover by having a drink (11am, a bit early maybe….but hey, it’s vacation!). The rest of day we spent by walking down to the Staropramen Brewery, here we tried to get a tour of the brewery but unfortunately they didn’t have any that day. So we just sat and sampled their products in their own beer garden. After spending the rest of the day just exploring the city (and trying our the subway) we finished our night by having dinner at a Lebanese restaurant called Diwan were we ordered a pre-set menu with 5 small starters first, some nice meat and baklava for dessert. All very nice but the starters almost finished us off, so much food. We finished the evening by having some mint tea and by smoking a apple flavoured water pipe, a Shisha. All of this, accompanied by a belly dancer!

Prague is a beautiful city, it has a good mix of old and new with great cafés and restaurants, nice people (who most spoke great English), good areas to relax and also with affordable food and beers (compared to Dublin at least). And about the beers, what to say, these Czech lagers are some of the best in the world. I’d love to return to Prague at a later date, as there is still so much to see and whilst we could have seen more if we rushed it, we wanted to have a nice relaxed vacation and we certainly did.

I recommend anyone to experience what Prague has to offer!