Picture Prague
posted at 11:01 am
on Mar. 12, 1999
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Before I sign off, let me just get in a few words about a trip Susie and I took to Prague.
It was just after we got to Paris, at the end of October, and we still had this Eurorail pass burning a hole in our pocket. We decided that for the last weekend we had before it expired, wed go to Prague.
Prague is about 20 hours away by train. We left on a Thursday, took a night train, for arrival on Friday morning. The weather was dreary, but the city was fabulous!
Its called the City of a Thousand Spires (or maybe a million or something like that), but still, its a lot of spires. It has a big astrological clock that attracted a huge crowd every hour on the hour, for god knows what reason. I mean, it was like the most boring mechanic puppet show Id ever seen, by I guess when somethings famous enough, it doesnt have to be interesting.
The price of things in Prague was low—not as low as wed been led to believe by everyone wed talked to, but still darned cheap. “Oh, yeah, I got a roast beef dinner for only 75 cents!” “I remember one place, where you could get a good steak and potatoes meal for about $1.00. It was enough for two, and that included a tip!” “Well, at the place _I_ ate, the plates were solid gold, and a caviar and truffle quiche was only a dime!”
We found some cheap clothing and the hostel was quite reasonable, but leather goods like shoes and jackets were as expensive as elsewhere that wed seen. We took a walking tour of the Castle and Cathedral. It was damn cold outside, raining and snowing and blowing wind, and by the end of it, we were shivering and headed back to our hostel.
That night, we saw a performance of Mozarts Magic Flute, and while we were a bit underdressed, the show was pretty cool, in Italian with Czech subtitles on a screen overhead. Supertitles? Whatever.
On Sunday, we jumped a train to get back to Paris for our Monday classes. I wish we could have stayed longer or perhaps gone at Christmas.
But its an excellent city, not to be missed.
