It's All About Me...

Prague Castle and More

Our dinner last night, as Dan said, was the best meal we have had since we started on our trip. We stumbled upon this fairly quiet cafe/wine bar/restaurant near the Old Town Square but away from the hustle and bussle. It is called U Zavoje (www.uzavoje.cz) and you can see for yourself from their website what an amazing set-up they have. The food was excellent - Czech-influenced Nouveau cuisine - and so was the wine. And given the quality of the food,with wine and dessert, the price was extremely reasonable. We enjoyed it so much that we returned this afternoon for some wine and cheese on the way back to the hotel after touring the Castle.

Our itinerary today involved walking down the Karvoska cesta (Royal Way), i.e. from the Prasna Brana (Powder Gate) to Karvolo Most (Charles Bridge), across the river up to the Praszky Hrad (Prague Castle), specifically the Chram sv Vita (St. Vitus Cathedral) within the castle. This was the processional route the Czech Kings took to the cathedral for their coronation.

Next to the Powder Gate was the Obecni Dum (Municipal House) which is possibly the most exuberent building in Prague. We just took a quick peek inside and it was Art Nouveau from top to bottom, as May Shiu put it, definitely 'Hercules Poirot' style!!

We saw many more wonderful buildings along the way, including U Zlateho Hada (House at the Golden Snake) which was the first coffee house in Prague. If you have never seen hordes of tourists, try the Charles Bridge in Prague. I cannot imagine what it looks like in the summer when it is high season if we are at the shoulder season right now! We managed to take a few photos on the bridge without having too many people on the way... one has to assume that all the photos for sale of the bridge without a soul on it were all taken either at the crack of dawn in the middle of winter or befre Prague became a hot tourist spot!

In order to build up energy for our 'hike' up to the castle, we stopped for lunch soon after we got to Mala Strana (little Quarter), the neirghbourhood on the other side of the bridge. We found a restaurant with a quiet courtyard which served pretty good food. We were quite pleased that we were the only ones at the restaurant, away from the crowds, only to find out later that we were just the only ones in the courtyard for everyone else were in the cellar part of the restaurant! Why would they want to eat in the basement when it was so nice outside was beyond me!

On the way up the hill to the castle, we saw quite a few interesting emblems of houses: 'Three Fiddles', 'Green Lobster', 'White Swan', 'Two Suns' etc. This was how houses were identified until 1770, when house signs were banned in favour of street numbers. Back then, tradesmen, merchants and such would have their initials, symbols of their trades etc. carved on the front of their house which served as the address.

We just missed the changing of the guards when we got to the castle, but May Shiu and I did stand next to the guard on duty and had our photo taken. We did see the next set of guards on their way to the front gate later on. Apparently, after the fall of communisim in 1989, the Czech costume designer who did Amadeus redesigned the guards uniform, replacing the khaki uniform with the current blue one.

The St. Vitus Cathedral was quite impressive. What's more, this was one of the rare times where there was no scaffolding of any kind that one could see on the front facade of an ancient cathedral! The interior is as one would expect of a Gothic cathedral meant for the coronation of kings. There was a maintenance crew on scaffolding on the back side of the cathedral, but at least they did not get in the way of us taking photos!

We had a coffee and dessert break at one of the cafes there and then finished walking through the grounds. We walked down the Old Castle Steps back to Mala Strana and then crossed the river via a different bridge. Eventually, we got back to U Zlatejo for some wine and cheese (and I had some blue cheese that I actually enjoyed...but not sure which kind it is...) before returning to the hotel for a nap before dinner.

Dinner at a steakhouse away from the main square was pretty good and now that I have identified a Czech dry red that I like, I am sticking to it: Frankovka from Moravia.

The conference starts tomorrow afternoon... *sigh* it's time to get back to 'work'.

posted by Anne-Gigi @ 2:47 PM