Prague (In the City)
Getting to Prague is easy. For most people you will take a connection out of Paris, but from there you have less than a two hour flight to Vaclav Havel Airport. When you get to the airport jump on the Airport Express. A nonstop bus service that will take you from the airport to the main train station in the downtown area. While you can take an Uber, which is roughly about $10 from downtown to the airport (we took Uber back to the airport), if you are looking for reasonable prices the Airport Express ticket is roughly $3 per person, and you can find the bus ticket station near the baggage pickup in the airport. Once in the downtown you can take a subway to locations all throughout the city, but most people are going to stay in the Old Town Square area which is only about a mile walk from the train station. Look for the two high steeples of the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn, and just walk towards them to get to the Old Town. There are numerous hotels and apartments for rent all throughout this area. My recommendation is to rent the apartment where we stayed. Owned by a local named Josef, the apartment is just a couple of blocks from the main square, sits above one of the best baker, butcher, and cheese shops in the city, and is an extremely modern American style apartment. The apartment also comes with a washing machine, a must for any long term traveler. We loved our stay there, and will stay there again when we return to Prague.
Old Town Square has been the center of Prague left since the early 1400's. Technically Old Town is in a section of town called the Lesser Town. When the city was built it was the home to the poorer residents of the city, while the richer citizens lived across the river near the palace. Bounded by the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn, the Old Town Hall, and St. Nicholas Church, in the center of the square is a statue dedicated to Jan Hus, the martyred leader of the Hussite movement that rebelled against the Catholic Church in the 15th Century. Around the square you will find everything you expect from a great tourist city. There are food carts, ice cream shops, street performers, and anything else you can imagine. One of the major attractions for the square is the Prague Astronomical Clock, one of the oldest working clocks in the world. Several stories high, at the end of the hour a skeleton rings the bell to mark the death of the hour, and then a parade saints circles above the clock to show you God's blessing on the next hour of your life. This clock still runs on the original mechanisms, but sadly will be shut down during the summer of 2017 for renovations. It is well worth hanging around for an hour to see the show. Then take the Old Town Hall tour, which is offered in very well-spoken English. Built in the 15th Century, the wonderful interior still holds the same chambers city officials have met in for over five hundred years. In the council chambers look at the massive gold chain running through the ceiling. It is not for support, but is there as a tribute to the chains that pulled up the gates of the city walls for centuries. When they tore the walls down they preserved the chains, painted them gold, and built them into the Town Hall. Go down into the basement and see the old dungeon, along with one of the original city streets. Constantly flooded, beginning in the 13th Century the city of Prague continuously brought in soil and over the history of the city has raised the ground level by nearly 20 feet.
When you are done at Old Town Hall take a few minutes to visit the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn. A massive cathedral that has stood there since the mid-13th Century, the city has been completely built around it for centuries. Impressive on the outside, it is not nearly as welcoming on the inside, but that may just be in comparison to the other wonderful cathedrals in the nation. They also greatly restrict your movement through the church, which is too bad. Across the square is St. Nicholas Church, the baby of the square. Built in the 1730's, this Baroque church is very small on the inside, but is impressive. They also have a great museum explaining the Hussite Wars which ravaged through the lands of Bohemia. If you really want an odd experience, walk down the the Church of St. James the Greater, where apparently they take the eye for an eye thing seriously. Over 400 years ago a thief got his arm stuck in the statue of Mary on the altar trying to unscrew the jewels attached to her head. What did the monks do the next day to get him out? They cut his arm off. The monks then hung the arm in the church where it has remained ever since as a warning to would be thieves.
Once you are done in the Old Town Square, feel free to head off in any direction. Just a few blocks away is the Jewish Quarter. A well maintained set of synagogues and cemeteries are worth a few hours of time. I will say we were shocked by the price to enter into the areas like the cemetery, but if you want to understand what life was like for Jews in Prague this is the best place to start. After this wander across town to Wenceslas Square. The center of what is called the New Town, the square has been the center of business in the city for nearly two hundred years. Lined with high end shops and restaurants, you can easily forget you are in Prague and feel like you are in Manhattan. At the end of the square is the Czech National Museum. It was closed for renovation while we were in town, but we hope it is open for our next visit. It is scheduled to reopen in 2018. If you really want to have some fun, wander back over to Old Town and go visit Choco-Story, a chocolate museum that includes what we all really want from all museums, all you can eat chocolate. Besides stuffing yourself like a six year old at Halloween, the tour also comes with a chocolate making display that is very entertaining.
Prague is wonderful, it's that simple. While the people of Prague, and the Czech Republic, may not be as outwardly welcoming as people from other nations, they are completely helpful, and the city feels completely safe. Like many old cities, there are side roads and alleys that shoot off in every direction. Take a few hours and just wander down these side streets. You will find shops of all types. Stores that would have closed in the United States because they lacked the visibility required to be successful have thrived on these side streets for centuries. You will even find some rare gems too. Wendy and I laughed at the Czech Museum of Communism, which they pointed out in their directions was located about the McDonald's. I laughed that a museum dedicated to a political philosophy that hated capitalism uses the literal symbol of American capitalism to get you to their place. I can't wait to visit again, and I hope if you have the chance to go with your family, or by yourself, you have the same great experience Wendy and I did.
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