A Beautiful Day in Prague
We’re well rested and ready for action this morning. A few words about our hotel. This is a real hotel and J&M have a nice
room with separate sleeping area on the second floor while Pat is in a single upstairs. The name is Cloister Inn relating to its
religious history while its history as a jail would make less of an inviting
name (Inn Jail?). We are located in the
middle of a triangle formed by Wenceslaus Square, Old Town Square and the
river. There is breakfast this morning
on the 4th floor with a nice selection of meats, cheese, fruits,
vegetables and pastries. There is a plum
cake like John’s mother used to make that is melt-in-your-mouth perfect. The staff is energetic and three ladies are
running around clearing plates as soon as the last bite is gone. This is also the first time we have had
horseradish and pickles on a breakfast buffet which is quite popular with some
of our little band.
We’re going to split up for a while, Mary and Pat go back to
revisit some of the sites we walked past on our tour and John to try to catch
up with some computer work. We agree to
meet “under the bell” at 1:00 for lunch.
Mary and Pat want to see an exhibit of the top photographs taken by
Czech photographers during 2014. Most
moving were shots taken of the flight downed over the Ukraine with the
casualties among the debris. The Sisters
spent the rest of the morning strolling the great little streets of the Old
Town.
John was perched under the bell as promised at 12:55 and we
all remarkably came to the same place at the same time. We did the 1:00 show at the astronomical
clock and then made a quick getaway out of the square and towards New Town
(Nove Mesto). Our Hotel Manager
recommended two great traditional restaurants yesterday and we did one last
night. We’re close to the other, U
Pinkasu, alleged to be the most Czech of Czech restaurants, and figure that’s
the place for lunch. It is about a 5 minute wait for a table to clear and we
sort through a lot of things that seem like they will kill us before
supper. Mary goes light and has a spicy
sausage with mustard and horseradish, Pat has the goulash (surprise) with
dumplings and an order of fried bread with raw garlic, and John has the sparrow
of baked pork with two cabbages and mixed Bohemian dumplings. Beers all
around. We do enjoy a light lunch.
We’re 7 minutes from the hotel and make the call to go back
to get our walking tour map with narrations for New Town. We take the long round trip popping out near
the top of the square and at the Wenceslaus statue. Wenceslaus Square is the site of much of the
political history of the Czech Republic.
This is where the Revolution of 1968 was put down by Russian tanks and
two young Czech students set themselves on fire. It is also the sight of the Czech Spring of
1989 (the Velvet Revolution) when 300,000 Czechs gathered here to announce to
the world that they were back from the decades of communist control. It is a celebratory place and you can feel
the vibrancy of a country that has come of age.
The Czechs we see here are walking around with their chests out and
rightly so.
It is another ten minutes back to our hotel before gathering
once again for yet another meal. We
promise to meet in an hour for our ritual cocktail and a walk across the
Charles Bridge to Mala Strana for dinner.
We’ve made reservations tonight at U Maltezskych Rytiru (“By
the Knights of Malta”) which is a restaurant we enjoyed 11 years ago. The key feature is a basement dining room
that is carved out of the side of the hill and couldn’t be more romantic. Yesterday we mentioned the floods of 2007 and
2013 which were not kind to the basement rooms.
There is still an odor of mold/mildew and after 5 minutes of candlelit
romance we opt for the upstairs dining room.
We pick a nice Moravian wine while Pat pours down a B52 featuring a
generous portion of Absinthe, much to the amusement of our waiter. She was bound and determined to try it and
good for her. She doesn’t stop smiling
for the rest of the night. John is
growing a curly tail and “oinks” when he hiccups but still opts for the fried
pork steak with grilled vegetables, Pat has the “Old Czech” goulash and shares
Czech mashed potatoes with Mary. We all
share an apple strudel for dessert with ice cream.
This is Pat’s finale—she heads out at 5:00 AM tomorrow
morning—which requires a long slow walk back across the Charles Bridge and a
final pilsner in the Old Town Square. It
is a beautiful but chilly night so we huddle under heat lamps until we
overheat. Our first visit to Prague was
the third stop on our first trip to Europe.
We were driving, still scared, lost and nervous, but our memories were
of a magical place that felt the way we always imagined Europe would feel. We have found things to enjoy about all of
the stops on our trip so far but Prague remains special to us. We especially enjoyed sharing Pat’s first
impressions which rekindled the way we felt 11 years ago.
It is hugs all around when we get back to the hotel (if you
know Pat you know how unusual that is) and good-byes until we get home. It was fun having another point of view,
another set of eyes and a biting sense of humor with us for the last two
weeks. We’ll miss that but will now have
to step up our games to fill in the holes.
What did we learn today?
11 years is too long to think a restaurant will still be the same when
you revisit.
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