Soy Madrileña: Prague

Unfortunately, I haven’t been to Budapest (yet). But I did finally get to go to Prague! This beautiful city has been on my bucket list for at least five years and I can finally Czech it off!

So what did we do in Prague? Well, with my trusty map and tour book (courtesy of my Spomma) in hand, I was the designated tour guide for the weekend (or 12 days, rather).

How’d it work out? Let's just say I have a fantastic sense of direction.

Day 1 (Thursday):

After a hop, skip, and a jump, we landed in Prague (aka a 2.5 hour flight). We explored the airport and were super tourists taking pictures the whole time (this may be frowned upon, I’m not really sure). We made our way to our hotel, which was in an excellent location and boasts the best vodka bar in town. This was my first luxury of the twelve-day stint Mom was in town. I had a giant comfy bed, tons of pillows, and a fancy bathroom. Dinner was fabulous that night. We headed over to the Municipal Building that has three restaurants in it and had some traditional Czech food. This included roast pig, roast duck, blueberry cake, and free shots and man was it delicious. We hit up the vodka bar and made friends with the cutest bartender I’ve ever met. He was funny, but found Mom and I even funnier (I don’t blame him – mind you, he was witnessing us only eight hours after our reunion).

Where we had dinner.

Day 2 (Friday):

We signed up for a free walking tour of the city around 10:30am. According to my map, the meeting point was only a few blocks away. We left the hotel around 10am just to be sure we made it on time. This was the first real encounter with the …interesting language of the city and my handy map that I apparently misread. We wandered around for a while, knowing we had to be really close and that if one small windy road led to another, we’d get to the plaza eventually. 45 minutes later (and 15 minutes after the tour left), we found the main square in Old Town. And guess what? The hotel was about 4.5 minutes away had we turned left instead of right out of the hotel. Lesson learned. After this, I really did become one with the map (no sarcasm this time).

Prague is a pretty small city - the metro has three lines and although slow, it is pretty reliable. The most fascinating and intimating part of the metro is the escalators. They’re between a quarter- and a half-mile long and are super fast. The first time we saw them, we weren’t sure how to get on without falling to an untimely doom (we gracefully figured it out). Anyway, because the professionally guided walking tour failed and the hop-on hop-off bus system there was a joke, I continued to guide us with the help of the metro.

This doesn't do it justice.

We explored and wandered around a bunch. The main plaza was precious and definitely took advantage of tourists. We had some tasty snacks, saw the astronomical clock (11:11:11 on 11/11/11 at the astronomical clock – what an epic wish!), and then continued to meander through the city. On the walk we stumbled upon a Sex Machine Museum (seriously), a chocolate museum, an outdoor market, and a scarf store (where the worker wanted to show Mom how to wear a scarf 17 different ways). We tried to find some infamous shopping district, but were disappointed by the outcome. This led to more snacks and eventually a nap.

Snack time!

Trdelnik. That's Czech for deliciousness.

Better than the nuts in NYC? You better believe it.

Astronomical!

Told'ya.

Hot Chocolate Pops at the Chocolate Museum

Isn't she precious?

Day 3 (Saturday):

The best day thus far. Friday was a bit of a wash as far as sightseeing goes. The next two days absolutely made up for it.

First stop of the day – the 0.3 mile-long Charles Bridge. It provides a beautiful view of the city from the Vltava River. After patiently crossing the tourist-packed bridge, we trekked on up to the Palace. We made it just in time to witness something along the lines of changing of the guard. It included a small parade, flags and lots of trumpet fanfares. Excellent timing. The view from the Palace was also beautiful considering it’s on a hill.

Nice view, eh?

Even better view.

Live entertainment.

Palace

From the Palace we decided to try to find the Lennon Wall and Love Locks (I can hear you laughing from here, Mom!). It didn’t take long to find our way. Before I knew it there was a bridge with a few dozen locks all over it and I was sure we had found the Love Locks since I knew they were on the way to the Wall. It was a bridge and they were love locks, but it wasn’t until a little while later that we learned they weren’t the Love Locks. Needless to say we decorated and locked on our lock to the “wrong” bridge. But that’s okay – at least it has company (yes it has a key, and yes we could have moved it, but Mom was convinced it was more special being on the first bridge). Compare the pictures:

Decorating our lock

The "wrong" bridge

Our lock attached

The "right" bridge - Love Locks

Post lock-extravaganza, I found one of my favorite little area in the city. It’s right below the Charles Bridge and around the corner from the Lennon Wall. It’s a precious little plaza that was chock-full of evidence of autumn (my favorite). Czech it out:

I love fall.

This bike rack also helps make me love the plaza.

Time to go to the Lennon Wall. This was the second wall to wow me in a matter of months (first the Western Wall, now this one). For some reason, I was moved and speechless even though the original graffiti can’t be seen. Now it’s just a wall of messages tourists have left over the months. Somehow that didn’t really matter. It was beautiful and even though Mom’s hands were numb, I didn’t want to leave (sorry about that…).

Enough said.

: )

Post Wall and (real) Love Locks, we wined and dined in a “heated” garden. We were freezing cold and kept warm with cozy Ikea blankets and laughing until we nearly cried (oh, and some traditional Czech goulash helped too).

Then it was time for Michelle to get confused for the third time in three days. I really wanted to see the Miminka Babies (giant baby statues) and I thought that they were all over by the Zizkov TV tower. Nope, not true. Only some of the giant babies are on the tower. We learned this after heading across town to see them (when it turns out we were down the road from them already). Oops. However, the TV tower provided excellent views of the city (that were poorly captured on camera because of the dirty, multi-layered glass surrounding the observation deck).

Zizkov Tower

Mom is now thoroughly exhausted and ready to call it a day. Fair enough, I guess she may have been jet-lagged or something…

Back at the hotel I did a little research. I was not about to go all the way to Prague and not see the giant babies I had imagined. Also not to be forgotten, the neat Dancing Building was still to be found.

Day 4 (Sunday):

I somehow convinced my good-sport Mommy to wake up at the crack of dawn to see a few last sights before catching our flight back to Madrid. The bitter cold air, fog, and frost that surrounded us as we headed out for our last tour of the city didn't help my case.


Fog on the Charles Bridge

Fog on the Charles Bridge

First sight – the Dancing Building. Cool huh?

Next on the list – giant babies. Where were they? Across the gorgeous Charles Bridge, through my favorite plaza in town, and down a path through a park. Helllloooo giant babies!! The Museum Kampa wasn’t open that early (since the church bells were just chiming for 9am by this point) so we missed that chance. But we did get to enjoy the lineup of awesome yellow penguins.