So you wake up in Prague and you know a whole day is ahead of you dedicated just for exploring this colorful city. Are you excited? Well of course 🙂 . The target for the one whole day we spent in Prague was to visit the main sights in the old city center (this time during the day) and to visit the castle of Prague.
As I have stated in my previous post, we were just a few metro stations away from the city center, so after having a delicious breakfast at the hotel, we headed off to the city center. Again, we were confronted with a lot of small, winding streets: our job to find stuff did not get much better compared to the previous evening. We were actually targeting the castle for the first half of the day, with the city center “reserved” for the second part.
Getting to the castle, however, took us through the old city center, so before we knew it, we were standing in front of the Astronomical Clock, so we had a few photos taken, but basically we were just trying not to get hit by someone and to get out of the photos of others. The crowd was a bit disturbingly dense… Anyway, the city was quickly getting alive, so we decided not to get spun off our target and looked for signs to take us to Karluv most (a.k.a. Charles Bridge) which seemed like the ideal place to cross to river to get to the side where the castle is. The bridge itself, although it is a simple arched bridge, is pretty impressive especially taking into account its age and the baroque statues it is decorated with. It also gives a pretty impressive view of the castle. But again, it was full of people, so we did not really spend too much time on it and went on instead towards the castle.
We climbed quite an impressive number of stairs to the castle, but eventually we got up before the crowd (or at least that is what we thought). We did not really know where the entrance to the castle was, so we decided to had a walk in the small park with a beautiful view of the city. We eventually got to an entrance, which to our surprise was actually the back entrance. This meant we had to go all the way back (this time within the castle walls though) to almost the spot we were at the beginning to buy tickets. We bought a Prague castle long visit ticket which entitled us to visit most of the sites without the need to additionally pay at each place. I must say the castle is pretty impressive and I think most sites are worth a visit. I especially liked St. Vitus Cathedral: I think it is one of the most impressive cathedrals in it’s class.
The tour of the castle took up quite a lot of time, and after quite a few hours of walking we were ready to go down to the city center, have lunch, then have a look around. It was a good idea to leave the city center walk to the afternoon, because at this time it was the fullest with street performers, who really animated the place. The general feeling was really good: Prague woke a lot of feelings reminding me of Amsterdam and Venice (interesting mix, right? 😛 )
We went to have dinner at a place recommended by a lot of people: U Fleku, a very rustic place where they seem to have an unlimited amount of beer and food for everyone. Do not expect to get an easy meal, when you order chicken here: here chicken means half a chicken (all inclusive). The beer itself is heavy and they simply serve you as you sit down, without a lot of questions asked. Anyway, we had an interesting dinner and I think we understood what eating out in Prague really means: beer, beer, heavy food and fun 🙂 .
Again, here’s the link with a selection of photos we took.
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