Dateline May 21, 2016, Prague
We arrived in Prague in the early afternoon and took a cab to our flat, the first Airbnb of the trip. The driver promptly relieved us of twenty euros for a ride that should have cost about five, and there was no real way to argue it. Lesson learned, and cheaply enough.
The flat itself was a wonderful little place in a quiet residential pocket, an easy walk from the Old Town Square and market.
Old Town Square. The Old Town Square is the center of everything in Prague. We walked down toward it to find dinner, passing through a run of shops with the city's history laid out on boards along the way. What stopped us first was the clock, the Orloj.
It is the oldest astronomical clock still running anywhere, first built in 1410. It was badly burned in May 1945, in the last days of the war, when the Germans set fire to this side of the square during the Prague Uprising, and it was repaired and keeping time again by 1948.
We had picked a restaurant called Mlejnice off Yelp, and getting to it through the little streets and alleys was a comedy, forty-five minutes for what should have been ten. When we finally found it they could not seat us, but they had just opened a second location nearby, so off we went, lost again, until a pedicab took pity and delivered us to the door. The food was worth every wrong turn, and two meals, an appetizer and a few beers came to about twenty-five dollars. That was our introduction to how cheaply you can eat in the East compared with the West.
To the castle. The next morning we set out for Prague Castle by way of the Charles Bridge. The bridge was begun in 1357 under Charles IV and crosses the Vltava River; for centuries it was the vital link between the castle and the Old Town, and it helped make Prague a great trading city between East and West. We walked across it amid a great deal of history and a great many people.
We could see the castle in the distance.
What we could not see was that reaching it meant a long hill followed by 407 steps. Yikes.
The climb was worth it. We chose not to tour the inside of the castle, a little jaded, we admit, after so many palaces already, but we bought tickets for the grounds, which were vast and beautiful, and we went into the church. St. Vitus Cathedral was magnificent.
That evening we made our way back down to the station, where a sleeper train was waiting to carry us through the night to Warsaw.
