Poor Kyle, the beer lover, has been in the land of cheap, excellent wine and expensive, crappy beer for almost a year now. While he has become quite a wine fan, he certainly misses nice craft beers. So for Christmas I decided to plan a trip to Prague, the motherland for quality brews and those who covet them. We finally went this past Thursday-Monday and had an absolutely awesome time!
We arrived in the evening and immediately set out for one of the restaurants/microbreweries that topped Kyle's list, Pivovarsky Dum. It was (like a lot of restaurants we visit when we travel) recommended by Anthony Bourdain, and it did not disappoint. In fact, we went there three times!
The first of many delicious beers in Prague...
I opted for the tasting - eight mini beers. They included light, dark, Scottish Ale, wheat, banana, nettle, sour cherry and coffee. The coffee beer was amazing!
Brace yourselves, there are A LOT of pictures of beer, the two of us with beer, breweries, etc :)
Prague is SOOOOO cheap compared to Paris. Especially beer, of course. This meal would have cost about 100 euro in Paris, but 715 Czech crown is equal to about 29 euro. We could not believe the cost of our first meal. Bring it on, Prague!
Great view of Prague Castle from our hotel room
This pretty much sums it up... "Jazz, Goulash & Beer"
Walking the famous Charles Bridge at night
For the second day of our trip I had a brewery tour booked, which turned out to be one of the best parts of our trip. We had a blast with our guide and three Aussie travelers that accompanied us.
Little did we know that Pivovarsky Dum would be one of our stops on the tour. Eight-beer sampler #2, don't mind if I do.
Another stop was U Fleku - it's just what you imagine a brewery in Prague would be like. It's actually the longest continually brewing brew house in Central Europe - since the 1400's! They only serve one beer, a double dark lager, and they just keep setting them in front of you until you manage to stop them. You can just picture everyone swaying side to side, singing and clanking glasses together. (The only bad part is that the place is absolutely filled with smoke, definitely my least favorite thing about Prague.)
Beer mug chandelier - perfect in U Fleku
Complete with an accordion player
After all that you need some good grub. Street meat!
Apparently one of the staples of the Czech street stalls is the fried cheese sandwich. That's right - fried cheese stuck between two buns. How can this be wrong??
Visiting the Prague Beer Museum. Which is not a museum at all. It's actually a cool pub with 30 beers on tap.
Be very careful not to spill a drop
Look at that, another sampler.
George and Dragon sucked us in by offering a free drink...
This is the free drink. Suckers.
Turns out it was way fun, though. I mean, how often do you see a "cowboy" from England singing John Denver, Adele and The Eagles in the Czech Republic?
We also met the sweetest French couple ever here AND ran into some of my new favorite girls... Animal costumes for a bachelorette party.
The Big Mistake
We decided we didn't have enough knowledge about Prague and we wanted to book a tour. After thumbing through some brochures at our hotel, we decided on one that combined a one hour river cruise with a one hour walking tour of The Old Town. Sounds promising. Nope, oh so wrong. In fact, it's laughable how terrible it was. The "guide" didn't speak AT ALL, except once when she pointed out two Jewish synagogues. The boat cruise was agonizingly boring - there was a recording that described what you were passing in eight different languages. What was the point of this guide?? To make it worse, it was just about the most expensive thing that we did.
Here we are being excited because we are about to embark on what is supposed to be a fun, educational afternoon.
At least we got some nice views from the river. However, if you ever go, do yourselves a favor and just walk along the riverbank for the same views.
Still holding out hope that we can turn this dud of a tour into something worthwhile...
Not gonna happen.
Our walk through Old Town was pretty.
This was when she stopped to point out the two synagogues. Look how riveted everyone is.
Enough is enough. We simply started walking the other direction before the tour was even over.
We'll just mosey around the gorgeous buildings until we find something good.
Ah, here we go... another pub!
Now we're having fun again!
Beer wheel #3
How ridiculous is this? That's one huge chunk of meat.
Although Prague seems like a really manly city with all the beer and meat, there is a very feminine aspect to it as well. The art nouveau buildings, the bright green oxidized rooftops, the river winding through - gorgeous.
The Astronomical Clock
Ballin'! Actually this is just about 125 euro. Why don't they just knock a zero off to make it easier for those of us that aren't mathematicians?
St Nicholas Church and Prague Castle
The St Nicholas Church is the most beautiful, ornate church I've ever seen. It's more extravagant than Versailles, which is saying a lot.
Back to beer
The John Lennon wall - the only place graffiti is legal
"Little Venice" - canal through Lesser Town
Bisous!
Maygan
