The next morning we were on a bus to Prague in the Czech Republic. I did not realize until we got there that the Czech Republic still uses its own currency. Chock that one up to stupid tourist. I naively assumed that since they are part of the EU; they are on the Euro. So, yes they are an EU member, but so far have voted against adopting the Euro. Well, it was a quick fix to exchange money, but took a while for us to get a handle on if something was a good deal or not.
For some reason, I have always wanted to visit Prague, however, as with most cities coming into the bus station is not very glamorous. Truly, it makes you wonder, why did I come here. We found our hotel without too much difficulty and went to our lovely unairconditioned room. We were in the middle of an extreme heat wave in Europe, well at least our room had a fan.
Prague is home to about 8 black light theaters. So, for our first night we thought we’d check out one of those performances. It was fun and a little corny. It is done using back curtains and fluorescent costumes. They don’t speak, but use music and miming to tell the story.
We scheduled a walking tour for the next day. This all day tour gave us a great overview of the various sites in the city as well as a boat ride and lunch. It was a lot of walking, but they did pick us up at the hotel and bus us up to the castle. It was all downhill from there for the rest of the day. The castle is huge and the short tour of the castle grounds is 3 hours. So, needless to say, our walking tour did the highlights and a quick peek inside the cathedral. We visited many other famous sites in the city and learned that the Czechs are the number one beer drinkers in the world. Therefore, beer is almost always one of the cheapest things on the menu and any politician that tries to change that will not be in office for long. Prague was also largely undamaged during WWII. Hitler wanted to make Prague the future capital of Germania after his victory.
Prague has a John Lennon wall. It was once a wall where people would write their grievances during the communist rule and be arrested as it was monitored by cameras. Now it is a place where people continue to express their freedom of speech without consequences.
After the tour we picked up tickets for the opera for the following evening. Don Giovanni was playing. This was one of Mozart’s operas and it originally debuted in Prague.
The next day we thought we’d take a day trip to tour Kunta Hora. Which looked like a really interesting UNESCO world heritage site. Well, we couldn’t find the tour we were looking for that world get us back in time for the opera, so Plan B. We went and toured the castle. Since we only had an overview the day before we were glad we got to explore a lot more of the castle and its grounds. We also got the audio guide and they take that stuff seriously. We had to give a $50 deposit and return the audio guide by a certain time in order to get our deposit back. Is there a black market out there for these audio guides, that I’m not aware of? I’ve really had no desire to walk off with one.
The opera that night was good, but I’m still not a big fan. At least I was able to follow the story. It is subtitled in both Czech and English while being performed in Italian. The theater was gorgeous.
Well, so long Prague, the next morning we were back on a bus headed to Berlin.