Prague Blog Part 1

Prague is a city, like Bruges in Belgium, that I have really wanted to visit for a long time, but things just haven’t lined up to get us there (I will get to Bruges one day, by God!). When Phil and I left Spain (check out the archives to read all about our 500 day adventure of living abroad) in May of 2022 for a summer of travel around Europe, we had to be very selective in the destinations we chose. Summer in Europe is notoriously the worst time to travel in terms of large crowds of tourists and increased prices to meet the demand of those tourists. After a year of not working, we had to be very mindful of expenses, so with a couple of exceptions, we chose lesser visited countries, primarily in eastern Europe. While Prague is not expensive, it’s also not cheap, and well, it just didn’t make the cut at the time.

Now that we’ve been back in the States and working for the past year and a half (boooo!), we were ready to get away and had the funds to do it. Because of the limited vacation time most US companies provide (boooo!), we wanted to be strategic in our plan to return to Europe. We would only have one week to spend and we didn’t want to spread ourselves too thin with trying to fit in multiple locations. After debating several possible destinations, we landed on Prague and several months later, landed IN Prague.

After a sleepless overnight flight and a layover in Munich, we arrived in Prague around 1pm. We have found the trick to avoiding jet lag is to stay up. By the time we arrived at our accommodations, we had been awake for 24 hours. It is very tempting to eat something, take a shower, and hop into bed after arriving at your destination. Don’t do it (sleep I mean, the eating and showering is fine). Try to make it until at least 8pm local time before going to sleep.

We had something special to look forward to which helped us stay awake. Our friend from Spain, Diana, who we met while living in Gijón, and her daughter, Diana (aka los dos Dianas), would be meeting us in Prague! We rented a two bedroom apartment so we could all stay together during our time in the city. We had just enough time to unpack and shower before they arrived.

After exchanging hugs and chatting a bit, we were off. Phil and I needed to keep moving so we could stay awake and we were eager to check out the city. We walked along the Vltava River, taking in views of the Charles Bridge and made our way to The Dancing House, a building designed by Croatian-Czech architect Vlado Milunić in cooperation with Frank Gehry. Gehry nicknamed the building Fred and Ginger (after Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire) as the building resembles two dancers. The building is comprised of office space, apartments, a luxury hotel, The Fred and Ginger Restaurant located on the 7th floor, and a rooftop bar, Glass Bar.

We rode the elevator to the rooftop to enjoy a drink and take in the views of the city. The outdoor portion of the bar has fairly limited space, but it wasn’t too crowded for us to find a place to stand and visit and snap a few photos. They did charge a fee if one took their drinks on the open air rooftop, which I wasn’t a big fan of but whattayagonna do? It was a lovely spot and at that point, I was ready to enjoy a drink.

After our prosecco cheers and photo sesh, we headed to the grocery store to pick up a few supplies for the apartment. Awake for 30-something hours, we were tempted to go to bed when we returned, but we were also very hungry, so Phil and I set out to find a close restaurant with traditional Czech food. Los dos Dianas stayed at the apartment, tired from their own day of travel, to have a late, light dinner, as the Spanish do.

We set out looking for a restaurant (a highly rated local place with multiple locations) that I’d recognized from my research when we’d passed it earlier. We knew it was close, but gave up on finding it fairly quickly due to exhaustion. We passed a pub that looked pretty legit and only had a few folks in it and decided to stop there for our dinner. We ordered tasty plates of chicken schnitzel, pork belly with chili and yogurt sauce, French fries, and spicy cabbage salad and, of course, paired it with a couple of beers. It’s the Czech Republic, dammit, the land of beer. Did you know that the Czech Republic drinks more beer each year per capita (around 324 pints) than any other country in the world? I can’t help but think that, contrary to what my parents’ DNA tests revealed, somewhere in my genealogical history, there are some Czech-German ancestors. A land of tall, beer guzzling pork lovers? That’s me to a T.

Fully satiated, we returned to the apartment at 10pm, and promptly fell asleep…for 12 hours!

When we awoke, it was time for our walking tour of Prague, so keep an eye out for the next blog post; added bonus, another friend from our days in Spain meets up with us!

Check out Phil’s post about our trip to Prague here