Our hotel was a short 9 minute walk from the train station, just on the other side of a main street where at the top of one end sat the Natural History Museum and the bottom of the other end was the entrance to the ‘old town’. I learned early on in this trip a city’s ‘old town’ is a must see for me. We were hot and tired from our train ride so all we had the energy for was sitting in our air-conditioned room and dragging ourselves out for dinner.
The hotel concierge assured us that Prague would be our favorite city on our European adventure. With its historical architecture and easily walkable streets it was definitely one of the top destinations. We spent our day navigating our way through ‘old town’ to get to the Prague Castle. The castle had paid admission to specific buildings or areas within buildings. Since, we only had the day we opted to tour only the free sites which were stunning on their own.
We left the castle in the height of the day’s heat and started back to ‘old town’. Along our way we spotted from the corner of our eye a museum dedicated to Karel Zeman. Karel Zeman was a pioneer in movie visual effects. Being a big movie enthusiast that Beth is, we needed to stop and explore. We were able to learn more about Zeman and the museum had a few interactive visual effects that visitors could try out. It was a fun unexpected detour.
As we begin to cross the bridge to ‘old town’ we felt a distinct temperature change. When we entered ‘old town’ the skies open and a deluge fell on to us. We were able to find safety in store doorways and waited 10 minutes until the rains passed, and they did not return.
Our youngest daughter had a souvenir request for unusual candies and Prague was the jackpot. It seemed like there were candy shops around every corner. It didn’t take long to fill a bag to bring back home.
Beth and I are both vegetarian and are pretty good at creating meals from meat-centric menus, but the options we saw in Prague appeared to be somewhat limited. I found an Asian vegan restaurant tucked away off the main road. The food was very good and a welcome change of pace from the typically pasta or pizza offerings.
