PRAGUE

[fluffymark]

So last weekend a group of us (snow_leopard, emomisy, emarkienna, davefish and erming) flew to the delightful city of Prague. Overall, Prague is magical - very romantic - it's most similar in cultural style to Paris, but with a slightly more historic feel. Something raw and untamed about the gothic towers and ancient architecture. Prettifying the whole town was vast quantities of Art Nouveau and Art Deco treasures, that made us gasp in awe. I've fallen in love with the place, although in many ways Italy has a lot more depth. Prague is a more like a tempting eastern European slut. :) My photos are now online here on my webpage.


At this time of year, the Czech republic is very cold. We arrived to find snow on the ground, and extremely sub-zero temperatures. We wrapped up warm, navigated the Prague metro, and got lost on a tram on the way to find Hostel Elf where we were staying. When we finally found it, we found the hostel to be very pleasant, and very warm. This was a good thing for some of us, but personally I found it too hot to get a decent nights sleep, despite the -15C temperature outside. The first evening we starving, and ventured to the Old town square, gazed at it's prettiness, and found a nearby local restaurant that served us amazing food and drinks for not very much at all. Hooray.

Friday morning we pootled into the old town to have a look at the sights. Amongst other things, we saw the Astronomical Clock chime, with it's weird little display, and we crossed the river via the Karlov Most (Charles Bridge) to get to Prague castle. The castle was very good as castles go, and has a very pretty cathedral in it (with a Mucha stained glass window!) and we found a great hall where they used to hold indoor jousting competitions *boggle*. We also found the historic room where some catholics got thrown out of the window, triggering the 30 years war. The window was shut while we were there however. Friday evening we gothed up and headed out to a goth club we'd found out about. This turned out to be free entry (yay) and in a very atmospheric cellar, with a very enthusiastic smoke machine, and the evilist strobe light ever. The Czech goths don't appear to dress up very much, and we very much stole the 'most overdressed goths' award for being poncey.

Saturday saw me and Dave take a day trip to the historical town of Kutna Hora. This turned out to be harder then we realised, as Czech train timetables are incomprehensible, and once outside Prague, we suddenly found ourselves encountering language problems. Still, by good fortune and the occasion bit of sign language we ended up on the correct trains, which are devastatingly cheap. To my total delight, it started snowing, and we spent the whole day trudging around in lots of freshly fallen snow. Hooray! Our primary destination in Kutna Hora was the Sedlec Ossuary, where an entire crypt has been decorated very prettily in bones. This was a very haunting place, but one of the highlights of the whole trip for me. After that we made our way to St Barbera's Cathedral, one of the most stunning churches I've ever seen, and certainly very gothic with its three pointing spires. For lunch, Dave ended up choosing the restaurant with the most perverse and dodgy pictures on the walls. Also the best coffee ever, according to Dave. We headed back to Prague to meet up with the others for a Chinese meal.

Sunday was my birthday! Yay! Presents included some lovely velvet trousers from Catt and some makeup from Mark. Another present was that it was still snowing, and there was lots and lots of snow on the ground, and Prague was very very pretty. First we headed the Museum of the history of Prague. The highlight of this was the huge and very detailed model of the city of Prague as it was in the early 19th century. Wow. There was also a slightly bemusing art display on show there by some artist called Emma who paints some very colourful and cartoony pictures, which appealed to me. We then headed for Petrin hill, to get a view of Prague. On the way there, we passed a Tea shop, and we bought many delicious teas. We got to the observation tower at the top of Petrin Hill via the funicular railway. The views from the top of the tower of Prague in the snow were simply magical. That evening we treated ourselves to a divine meal at the restaurant in the very Art Nouveau Obecni Dum (the municipal house), the poshest restaurant in the whole of Prague. We were hopelessly underdressed, but they served us well (3 waiters for the 6 of us!) and the food was impeccable, the wine was like nectar, and they even gave us a starter compliments of the house. We were all overawed by the whole experience, as it was the equivalent of the Ritz.

Monday saw us going to the Mucha Museum. This was stunning, and featured many pretty graphics, some of which I know and love, and some which were new to me. I bought many postcards to decorate my bedroom with. Later in the day, we found out about an art exhibition at Obecni Dum, and wanting to see more of the interior of that wonderful building we thought that an excellent excuse to go. The exhibition itself was by Prochazka, and didn't particularly impress me, excepting some of the more colourful cubist paintings and some of his more romantic later work. In the evening we returned to the restaurant we'd found on the first evening, and had more delicious food.

Tuesday was spent returning home. This was made slightly more exciting by the British Consulate, who (presumably for security reasons) wanted to check everyone flying to London pre check-in to see if anyone was a dodgy terrorist. They decided in the end that we were safe to let back into Britain. Silly people. Becherovka was on sale at Prague airport duty free for a tiny fraction of the cost of the spirit in London, so I decided I'd buy some. And so we waved byebye to Prague.

Comments

[erming.livejournal.com]

Prague is a more like a tempting eastern European slut. :)


Ah, so it was you who was tempted by the prostitutes then :)