Weekend in Prague 1

Prague is a 4,5 hrs train ride from Vienna. And still we have never been! So this was a definate minus we wanted to correct. We booked a room via www.hofer.at (thanks for the tipp, Tschü!) and a ride with www.oebb.at and off we went. We knew before, that a weekend would be very, very short for a first visit, but nevertheless the opportunity was there, so we took it.

We were so lucky to travel on the first real Spring weekend, it was gloriously sunny and the temps were in the 20°C. Riding into Prague we had the most lovely sunset.

At the station we were met by Julia, a fellow student and friend who spends an exchange semester in Prague and who gave us the Grand Tour (pun intendend, the Grand Tour being one of the topoi in my thesis). She picked us up, bought the train tickets, took us to our hotel and out afterwards... We felt really spoilt and like V.I.Ps who do not have to plan anything themselves but are cared for all the time. Thank you so much, Julia! And please let us do the same thing whereever we travel from now on!

Our hotel was in the very town centre, so after checking in we strolled to the Karlsbrücke from there first thing. And it was great to do this, the night was so warm and really springish, and we got our very first impression of touristic/historic Prague. What a great idea to take us there, thanks to our guide!

The Karlsbrücke was built in the 14the century, in 1357, on the 9th of July at 5.31hrs the first building steps were done - gosh, I will never forget that date from now on! Anyway, I won´t bore you with information you can easily retrieve from Wikipedia, just let me give you my own impressions. It was the mildest night when we were there, few people around and we immediately had the feeling to be in the very heart of the city. Us and zillions of tourists (which we met the other day) cannot be wrong. So if you ever come to Prague - start your explorations from the Karlsbrücke. It definately is the perfect place!

Walking across the Karlsbrücke you have a wonderful view on the Prager Burg (the castle), the light is perfect for picture taking and everything is peaceful and relatively quiet if you come late. It was a brilliant first impression of the Old Town. Today it is connecting the Historic Old Town with the so-called Kleinseite. (It is called differently in Czech, please bear with me, I don´t have a clue about Czech. That actually ticked me off, because even going to Turkey I know a few lines.)

Walking over to the other side of the bridge is fabulous, especially on a Spring night like this. Colours, lights and impressions everywhere.

And at the end of the bridge a lovely bakery that was open late. We got great sweets there - thank you for inviting us, Julia!

It was quiet over there and almost no people - we did not know yet how much that would change the next day! We were munching our goodies and thought: This is Prague!

On our way back we got other stunning views. When the bridge was built originally there were no statues or anything. They were added in the following centuries as Holy people obviously where the "in"-thing to put on bridges. And everywhere else. And nowadays they are great photo models.

On our way back we found that the Prager Musikverein was close by. What a lovely building! Gee, wasn´t it nice in the days of the Habsburg Monarchy? (I am just talking about culture and architecture of course. Please do not get me started about the principles of monarchy.)

Of course we were hungry too, before we went to bed. So we went to this cool place that Julia recommended, and we had "Svicková" (svíčková). I know that this is spelled wrong, but I am missing the proper keys on my keyboard. Anyway, describing it as a non-czech, it is a lot of yummy sauce with Bohemian dumplings (extra yum!!!!!) and some sliced beef. It was lovely! And the beer went down with it great!

Then we were just too tired for anything else and we went back to our hotel. Honestly, we paid so much more for so much less! We immediately felt at home, the matresses were so soft, the bathroom so clean.... we loved it there.

This is the entrance area of our hotel. It is a piano bar, and we instantly liked it here. Even though we never saw somebody actually playing the piano, lol.

This is the view from our room. On the other side of the hotel there was a street right parallel at the river. Here it was nice and quite (excecutive floor, Stefan bribed additional EUR 5,- for it), and we loved it the very first second we went into our room.

So this was our very first impression of Prague, and we were really tired after it. So we went to bed hoping for some great day to follow.

Stay tuned...