Prague

Crann na Beatha

This post has been deleted.

Crann na Beatha

This post has been deleted.

Crann na Beatha

This post has been deleted.

IamMetaldave

Hey man, I find booking.com is great for deals for Prague. I am actually going on Thursday for my 4th time. We're staying in the Motel One. By all accounts its awesome! I'll report next week for sure  There's millions of bars of all type, if you drink local beers you'll spend around 2.50 a pint.

quadrifoglio verde

GETTING AROUND

Bring good walking shoes!
While the public transport is great, everything that is to be seen is close to each other.
It is cheap though. 30 mins on all forms of public transport is 24 koruna, 32 for 90 mins and 120 or so for 24 hours.

Don't take taxis without negotiating the price. If it's answered in euro move onto the next. If it seems extortionate, move onto the next. 27 koruna is one Euro. Divide every price by 25 to get a rough estimate.

From the airport it's about 15 minutes in a taxi and will cost the equivalent of 30 Euro or so. A bus also leaves the airport on the opposite side of the taxi rank that joins up with metro line A every 15 minutes. It takes around 15 minutes to reach the metro stop and from there to the city takes 15 minutes or so. It's coin only to buy the tickets. A 32 koruna ticket will do for the entire journey so quite cheap.

SIGHTS
The astronomical clock is fairly cool. OK its a clock with a few different dials that move, but it was built in the 15th century. To put it into context we still thought the sun rotated around the earth then and this mistake can be seen on the clock. On the hour there's a walk of the apostles where they come out and spin around. Death also strikes the time. It gets fairly crowded on the hour so arrive early in the morning or late in the evening to avoid crowds.

Walk along Charles bridge. It's the oldest bridge in the city adorned by statues and apparently held together by egg yolk. I wouldn't pay much attention to them as they're replicas. The real ones are kept in a museum away from the elements.

The synagogue has an exhibition of paintings done by children of the region killed in the holocaust. Quite moving when you see the innocence of youth.

David Cerny statues. This man has statues everywhere around the city. From Sigmund Freud hanging of a building 5 or 6 stories high, two men pissing onto the Czech Republic, babies crawling up a tower, the rotating head of Kafka that's in 40 odd pieces, and an upside down horse being ridden by wencleclaus, his statues are interesting and provocative.

The castle is one of the largest in the world. If you go up and wander around it's fine, but I'd go on a tour. You get lots more information about everything that you're looking at.

The crypt where the heroes of operation antropoid held out in before they died a heroes death, rather than give themselves up to the 700 Nazi's that had stormed the Church. The bullet holes are still present and again is quite moving. This is only down the road from the dancing house which is worthy of a 5-10 minute gaze.

Viktov hill is also worth a visit. It's a 20 minute walk from florenc metro station and on top is the third largest horseback statue in the world. It's of jan zizka, one of the leaders of the hussites. He along with a force of 100 men held off and defeated over 3000 knights of the holy Roman Empire. Views are stunning as well from up there.

If you've time the town of kutna Hora is worth a day trip. Takes an hour by train and costs roughly 8 Euro return. The sedlec ossary is also located here more commonly known as the church of bones. Over 70,000 bones mainly from the plague. A good few of them have been turned into sculptures, the most impressive of which is the chandelier! Right beside it is the cathedral of the assumption of our lady. I'm not religious but it was definitely worth a visit. Has a huge self supporting spiral staircase and the attic of one of the naves was open. You can climb up into it and see the construction of the domed roof! While it might sound boring, you don't get that in any other cathedral and was fascinating to see. The church of St Barbara is also worth a visit, it's a slightly smaller version of notre Dame, without the tourist queues.

Just a few things that I spent doing while I was there. I'll go back but it'll be to wander around. It's such a pretty city with its baroque and art nouveau architecture with a bit of cubism sprinkled here and there. Lovely to just walk around and soak up the atmosphere.

ACCOMMODATION AND FOOD

Hotel wise we stayed in the grandior hotel. Room was cheap enough, breakfast excellent and staff lovely.

Food wise cafe Louvre and cafe imperial are certainly worth visiting. These seem to attract the non tourist clientele and was the place to be seen in the early 20 century of Prague when they were visited by the likes of Kafka and Einstein. Old world charm, excellent food and very reasonably priced.
Also worth a visit is nase meso, a butchers shop. Sells excellent hot food and has become an institution with locals. Some excellent restaurants and a really good bar called local on this street called Dlouha.

Prague is littered with tourists traps trying to sell you expensive souvenirs, tacky Prague drinking teams T-shirts and restaurants selling mediocre food at the same price as high end restaurants. Avoid them and you'll enjoy Prague, visit them and you'll despise the city.
Thankfully few if any of the pubs are like this. If your paying more than 60 Koruna for a beer, move on as you're getting ripped off. Also bear in mind the Czechs have a responsible attitude to beer. They might have a beer at lunch, one at dinner and perhaps with breakfast before work too, but they don't seem to do getting hammered.
Save the hangover for Ireland, the city is too good to spend half the day in bed with a sore head.

guile4582

quadrifoglio verde wrote: »

GETTING AROUND

Bring good walking shoes!
While the public transport is great, everything that is to be seen is close to each other.
It is cheap though. 30 mins on all forms of public transport is 24 koruna, 32 for 90 mins and 120 or so for 24 hours.

Don't take taxis without negotiating the price. If it's answered in euro move onto the next. If it seems extortionate, move onto the next. 27 koruna is one Euro. Divide every price by 25 to get a rough estimate.

From the airport it's about 15 minutes in a taxi and will cost the equivalent of 30 Euro or so. A bus also leaves the airport on the opposite side of the taxi rank that joins up with metro line A every 15 minutes. It takes around 15 minutes to reach the metro stop and from there to the city takes 15 minutes or so. It's coin only to buy the tickets. A 32 koruna ticket will do for the entire journey so quite cheap.

SIGHTS
The astronomical clock is fairly cool. OK its a clock with a few different dials that move, but it was built in the 15th century. To put it into context we still thought the sun rotated around the earth then and this mistake can be seen on the clock. On the hour there's a walk of the apostles where they come out and spin around. Death also strikes the time. It gets fairly crowded on the hour so arrive early in the morning or late in the evening to avoid crowds.

Walk along Charles bridge. It's the oldest bridge in the city adorned by statues and apparently held together by egg yolk. I wouldn't pay much attention to them as they're replicas. The real ones are kept in a museum away from the elements.

The synagogue has an exhibition of paintings done by children of the region killed in the holocaust. Quite moving when you see the innocence of youth.

David Cerny statues. This man has statues everywhere around the city. From Sigmund Freud hanging of a building 5 or 6 stories high, two men pissing onto the Czech Republic, babies crawling up a tower, the rotating head of Kafka that's in 40 odd pieces, and an upside down horse being ridden by wencleclaus, his statues are interesting and provocative.

The castle is one of the largest in the world. If you go up and wander around it's fine, but I'd go on a tour. You get lots more information about everything that you're looking at.

The crypt where the heroes of operation antropoid held out in before they died a heroes death, rather than give themselves up to the 700 Nazi's that had stormed the Church. The bullet holes are still present and again is quite moving. This is only down the road from the dancing house which is worthy of a 5-10 minute gaze.

Viktov hill is also worth a visit. It's a 20 minute walk from florenc metro station and on top is the third largest horseback statue in the world. It's of jan zizka, one of the leaders of the hussites. He along with a force of 100 men held off and defeated over 3000 knights of the holy Roman Empire. Views are stunning as well from up there.

If you've time the town of kutna Hora is worth a day trip. Takes an hour by train and costs roughly 8 Euro return. The sedlec ossary is also located here more commonly known as the church of bones. Over 70,000 bones mainly from the plague. A good few of them have been turned into sculptures, the most impressive of which is the chandelier! Right beside it is the cathedral of the assumption of our lady. I'm not religious but it was definitely worth a visit. Has a huge self supporting spiral staircase and the attic of one of the naves was open. You can climb up into it and see the construction of the domed roof! While it might sound boring, you don't get that in any other cathedral and was fascinating to see. The church of St Barbara is also worth a visit, it's a slightly smaller version of notre Dame, without the tourist queues.

Just a few things that I spent doing while I was there. I'll go back but it'll be to wander around. It's such a pretty city with its baroque and art nouveau architecture with a bit of cubism sprinkled here and there. Lovely to just walk around and soak up the atmosphere.

ACCOMMODATION AND FOOD

Hotel wise we stayed in the grandior hotel. Room was cheap enough, breakfast excellent and staff lovely.

Food wise cafe Louvre and cafe imperial are certainly worth visiting. These seem to attract the non tourist clientele and was the place to be seen in the early 20 century of Prague when they were visited by the likes of Kafka and Einstein. Old world charm, excellent food and very reasonably priced.
Also worth a visit is nase meso, a butchers shop. Sells excellent hot food and has become an institution with locals. Some excellent restaurants and a really good bar called local on this street called Dlouha.

Prague is littered with tourists traps trying to sell you expensive souvenirs, tacky Prague drinking teams T-shirts and restaurants selling mediocre food at the same price as high end restaurants. Avoid them and you'll enjoy Prague, visit them and you'll despise the city.
Thankfully few if any of the pubs are like this. If your paying more than 60 Koruna for a beer, move on as you're getting ripped off. Also bear in mind the Czechs have a responsible attitude to beer. They might have a beer at lunch, one at dinner and perhaps with breakfast before work too, but they don't seem to do getting hammered.
Save the hangover for Ireland, the city is too good to spend half the day in bed with a sore head.

thanks for this great review!!

can I just ask, where best to exchange money over there?
also, could you name some nice bars for an evening drink?

quadrifoglio verde

guile4582 wrote: »

thanks for this great review!!

can I just ask, where best to exchange money over there?
also, could you name some nice bars for an evening drink?

I used my credit card. I didn't mind loosing a Euro here or there on the exchange rate, it was quite easy. I had 100 Euro withdrawn for small things like metro, taxis and sights, the rest I paid for by card.

Drinks wise, we just went into bars we liked the look off. We weren't after mad sessions.