Prague (1)

So I've just had seven nights in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. It was my first time there, indeed my first time in Eastern Europe, and so everything was new. A week is quite a long time to spend in a city so it's important to pace yourself and take things at a leisurely pace. Don't eat all the sweets at once.



We were staying in a hotel, La Boutique, to the south of the city in an area called Smichov. The hotel itself was right next to the Staropramen brewery, and from our room we could actually see into it and see bottles coming off the production lines. It would have been good to have beer piped straight into the room but this wasn't happening. Oh well. There were plenty of bars nearby.

Whilst the brewery didn't seem to do tours, it did have a bar/restaurant attached which served a variety of typical Czech dishes. Most of these involve cabbage and dumplings. Bread dumplings, potato dumplings, stuffing dumplings and dumpling dumplings. They like their dumplings. With cabbage. We ate there on the first night, and I had a huge piece of duck (with bread dumplings and red cabbage, natch). It was nice enough and was washed down well by the several pints of beer.

Generally, I ate quite well over the week. Since we were out for lunch and dinner every day, it was hard to ever feel hungry especially after allowing for breakfast in the hotel. I tried to eat a mixture of Czech and non-Czech food (ie Italian, Mexican, random) to save on dumpling over-exposure.

If you stayed there long enough it would be easy to turn into a giant dumpling. With cabbage hair. And beer wee.

Tomorrow: Some Thoughts On The Sights of Prague.