We had a great adult-only weekend getaway with friends Kelly and Andre Basile to Prague. The ash cloud seemed to be dispersed enough with no threat of being trapped in a city, known for its locally brewed beer, without our kids...wait, that would not have been so bad after all!
We left on Friday night after work - John, Andre and Me! Kelly had theatre tickets with her daughter and some girlfriends so she joined us on Saturday morning.
We arrived rather late so we decided to stay close and give the hotel bar a try. An interesting note about our hotel, The Augustine. It was once a monastery where the monks brewed their own beer. "At St. Thomas's" beer was first brewed in 1352 by Augustinian monks. The brewery gained such renown that it was appointed sole purveyor of beer to the Prague Castle. Now a hotel, the most spectacular beer hall called the "Cave" has been maintained and they serve St. Thomas's beer.
On Saturday after breakfast, Kelly arrived so we set off on a walking tour of the city. We love the DK Eyewitness Travel guide books because they always suggest some walks that allow you to see a great deal while on foot. Our "90-Minute Walk along the Royal Route" actually lasted about 4 hours...mostly because we enjoyed stopping at the various cafes for the locally brewed Staropramen.
Along the way we stopped at the Wallenstein Palace and Gardens, Prague Castle - including the Powder Tower, St. Vitus's Cathedral and Dalibor Tower and the Charles Bridge. We also enjoyed booked tickets for a pre-dinner string quartet concert. The day of walking and drinking beer caught up with us, however, and we all started to nod off! Then we went to Kampa Park, where we had one of the best dinners we can recall! Kampa Park is a lovely restaurant on Kampa Island on the Vltava River. We strolled back to the hotel and enjoyed a pint of St. Thomas's before retiring for the evening.
On Sunday morning we started our day wandering through Old Town to the Municipal House, Prague's most prominent Art Nouveau building. Then we arranged a guided tour of the Jewish Quarter. It was fascinating. In the Middle Ages there were two distinct Jewish Communities in Prague's Old Town. These two settlements eventually merged and were confined in an enclosed ghetto. Although the ghetto slums were ultimately razed, the Town Hall and six synagogues were saved. The Jewish Cemetery was for over 300 years the only burial ground permitted to Jews.
Because of the lack of space, peple were buried on top of each other up to 12 layers deep. Today you can see over 12,000 gravestones crammed into the tiny space and an estimated 100,000 people are buried here. After our tour of the Jewish Quarter, we wandered back to Old Town square and stopped for lunch at a rooftop cafe with stunning views of Prague.
After lunch we did some shopping and enjoyed strolling all over the city without hearing, "Mom I'm tired" "Mom, my feet hurt" "Mom I'm hungry" "Mom can we get ice cream" "Mom this is boring."
Our wandering led us up Nerudova Street and we stopped for dinner at a cafe in the shadow of the Prague Castle. Then it was back to The Augustine for our usual nightcap in the Monk Bar.
On Monday we only had the morning to explore Prague before heading back to London. We decided to turn to the guide book again and took a walk through Petrin Park where we enjoyed another stunning view of Prague from atop the Observation Tower.
We had a great weekend with our friends but sadly, it was time to return to reality. So, it was back to the hotel to pick up our bags and get to the airport. No trip with the Basiles would be complete without some sort of Griswald moment. As we were driving to the airport in our taxi with the non-English speaking driver, his fuel indicator started blinking and beeping. We all looked at each other and did our best not to start laughing. Thankfully we arrived to the airport in time. Our driver, however, could not get the taxi started and we watched him add about a gallon of gas to his car! We made it back to London safely with no ash cloud interference!
Na zdraví!!
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