Czech Mates

Apologies for the simply awful title, and more importantly, our general slackness in writing new enrtries.

Anyway, back in midJanuary (told you we were slack) we took a weekend break in Prague, visiting Lukas (a very old friend of Stu's who lived in Wellington for a year or so in the mid 90's) and his girlfriend Mirka.

We arrived in Prague on Friday evening and went to Lukas's brother Thomas and his wife Monika's house, where we would be staying for the weekend, and had a fun evening catching up on 12 years of our respective lives! We had dinner at a local pub: classic Czech food involving lots of pork with creamy sauce, cabbage and beer, which was great.

The next morning, we hopped on a communist-era tram and headed into the city. We started in the old part of town, up on the hill and went into Prazska Loreta, a very ornate baroque convent from the 17th century.

From there, we headed towards Prague Castle, a huge complex overlooking the city made up of a number of buildings from different eras and styles, including a catherdral.

The view from the castle wasn't too shabby either...

From there, we headed down the hill to Charles Bridge (built in 1357). At the end of the bridge, there was a tower, which we climbed. From up there, we had a 360 degree view of the city: in one direction there was the hill and the castle...

And in the other there was the rest of the city

From there, it was off to lunch (garlic soup) and onwards for a look around the rest of the town, passing the astological clock:

From there, we took the Metro to another part of town where we had some honey cake and coffee. Interesting thing about their metro: the train was an ancient russian one, yet it was still quieter, smoother and faster than anything on the London Underground. The tickets cost about 50p, compared with 4 pounds in London. Go figure.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon/evening having a walk through a few parks before heading back out of the city for another pub dinner (with obligatory beer!). The rest of the evening was spent back at Thomas and Monika's house in a haze of Czech wine. The idea of Czech wine might surprise some people, but the region where Lukas is from, Moravia, has quite a long history of wine making. The wines are mainly white (or lighter reds) and made from local grape varieties, and they were actually rather good.

The next morning, we visited a very interesting park built around a bizarre star-shaped house, the Hvezda Summer Palace, which dates back to 1555. It was a really cool thing to see: an oasis well away from the city and tourists. (google maps users: see 50° 5'0.40"N 14°19'34.53"E)

From there, we went across the city to Lukas and Mirka's house, where Mirka cooked us a great lunch. We walked this off with a stroll around the neighhourhood and up to a clifftop overlooking the river. All too soon, it was time to go back to the airport and return home.

It was fantastic to see Lukas again: he and Mirka were excellent guides, and Thomas and Monika were wonderful hosts (Thanks a lot guys!). Prague is a beautiful city, and we had a huge amount of fun there. We'll defintely be visiting again before we return to NZ, and hopefully then we'll be able to see more of the country.

We'll finish the entry with a pic of Lukas and Mirka: without them, we wouldn't have enjoyed ourselves nearly as much!