Thursday 31st August 2014
Day 1: Viewpoints Segway Tour
We arrived at our hotel after 11pm to find we had been bumped up to the Royal Suite free of charge – awesome! Our suite was a huge one bedroom apartment complete with walk in wardrobe. After a good nights sleep we spent the day checking out the old town a bit before heading across Charles Bridge to the lesser town for a private Segway Viewpoints Tour.
The weather, although cloudy, was pretty hot so doing the tour on Segway was a great idea. Not only were they fun to travel on but we travelled around the outskirts of the city, uphill to get to the viewpoints. Doing that on foot in the heat would have been a tiring sweaty affair and we certainly would have been able to cover that kind of ground in the same amount of time. After the tour we ate some typical Czech food at Lokál which is a decent enough restaurant if you like Czech food which we discovered we didn’t. They do like their pickled and breaded stuff.
I’m not arachnophobic, but the most memorable thing about walking across Charles Bridge at night, despite the beautiful view of the city under uplights, was the huge spiders that had made their homes all over the sculptures.
Day Two: The Old Town
We spent the day being leisurely around the old town today. Prague is possibly one of the most beautiful cities in the world! In the evening we had dinner at the most wonderful French restaurant, Grand Cru. The food was beautiful and the wines were astonishing both in quality and price. It was so good, I would go to Prague again to eat there!
Day Three: Prague Castle
We couldn’t leave Prague without visiting Prague Castle. Dating back to 870, it’s said to be the largest ancient castle in the world. That said, it doesn’t look much like a castle. It’s sprawling set of buildings which have been extended, renovated, restored and reinforced over the centuries. On display are a huge array of architectural styles, Baroque, Gothic, Romanesque.
The architecture all over Prague was beautiful. It seemed that with every invasion, occupation and take over the next establishment had come and built even more wonderful buildings to leave their mark. The gothic buildings were the most impressive. They even had very different styles of gothic. St Vitus’s Cathedral viewed from a distance is the most gothic building I have ever seen. Closer up you notice the paler colour of the walls (higher up and from a distance it is very black, presumably from the buildup of soot, lower parts of the building have been cleaned) and some flavour of baroque in the stonework. The Church of Our Lady before Tyn on a cloudy day resembled how one might envisage Dracula’s home, positively terrifying and yet beautifully alluring at the same time.
Ramblers Rumblings 