Prague

On the advice of some American friends we deecided to visit Prague. Of course we did this not long after the war in Bosnia and so we were conscious of the anti British sentiment. Not to mention the grafiti!

It was 2 or 3 hours before we crossed into the Czech republic which for us was relatively easy. But for a lot of the people entering Germany it looked like a long drawn out job. An hour or two later we were going through Pilzen, the home of Pils and the Skoda factory. This was shortly before VW had much of an influence and if we needed a reminder of where we were it was in the sheer number of Skoda 120 cars everywhere. I must admit ive never seen a Skoda with a crook lock on!!

It wasn’t much further and we found ourselves driving into Prague. The strange thing was that the first sight we had was of a huge Tescos and Ikea which we vowed to go into on the way back. We carried on through and drove to the area we were supposed to be staying in. It looked pretty grim and with all the grafiti we decided not to stay in the flat belonging to a local. Instead we called her and said our car had broken down and couldnt stay. Instead we booked into the Ibis, which was pretty good and they even had a 3 bed room next to ours for the kids for a very reasonable price. Actually the same as the flat we had booked. The benefit being that in the basement of the hotel there was a car park whch was much safer sounding.

We went into the city centre for dinner using the underground. Language was more of a problem here as it was nothing like German and they couldnt understand anything i tried so we bought our tickets more in hope than anything else. They turned out to be something like 50p each for the day. The underground was a bit nerve racking. The trian was about 30 years old and clanked and scraped its way along. Braking at the last minute and throwing all but the hardened locals the length of the carriage at every stop.

With 3 young tired kids we opted for a safe bet for dinner. TGI Friday’s! But it meant we could relax and be certain everyone would eat. Which they did happily.

The next day we went to the castle via Tram. This was an experience, the castle is a beautiful gothic style and is awe inspiring. We bought a poster of the castle which is still hanging in our hall.

On the trip home we visited the huge Tesco’s and bought beer for 20p a bottle and nice soft white doughy bread 😉 luxury as far as we were concerned.

A few years later we retunred to Prague with the inlaws. We stayed at the Moeven Pick hotel and used the bus and trams to gert around. On arriving at the hotel i was told that our room was accessed via the cable car. You can imagine my shock at hearing this. I was surprised and assumed it was a bad translation for the lift. So i walked around the corner as directed only to be faced with, yes you’ve guessed it. A cable car!! It turned out that the Hotel had an upper section on the top of the hill it backed on to and it needed a short cable car ride to get there. It was a fantastic view of the castle at night and worth a trip just to stay in this hotel.

This time we also went to the castle and strangely enough we met the Head of Munich International School in the castle museum. They had travelled on the overnight train to get there and would do the same to return. Such an unusual coincidence.