Prague

Well, we finally made it. About 6 months after we booked it, and after a few weeks where we didn't know whether Aer Lingus were going to go on strike and either strand us there or stop us going at all, we're just back from our few days in Prague. So, the xmas shopping is pretty much all done and dusted now!

For once, there wasn't a delay in Dublin, even tho we were flying out of the Ryanair prefab, and we got to Prague about the time we expected to. Was a bit of a shock when we got there - it was warm! Well, not exactly t-shirt weather, but 1-2 degrees, just like back home. After weeks of taking the piss out of Michelle, saying she was going to freeze to death there, it was almost disappointing not to be in -10 degrees! The hotel was pretty damn good, it was in a quiet back street in Male Strana, and the room we got was huge! Was nearly the size of our apartment, with gilt everywhere and a four-poster bed! Hell, even the bathroom had a chandelier! there was only one problem tho: their computer system was on the fritz when we arrived so they couldn't code a keycard for our door. Meant any time we left and wanted to go back into the room, we had to get the receptionist to come up with us and leave us in with the master key :-)

So, after settling in it was still early, about 4pmish, so we headed out to wander around town. I still pretty much remembered the way to go, so we headed for the main market in Old Town Square. Once we got there, it definitely looked the part anyway, very picturesque. First order of business tho, food! So we wandered around the stalls seeing what sort of edibles there was. Pretty soon we found something that was very much to Michelle's taste: a pastry thing called trdelnik, which is wound around a wooden roller, cooked on the spot and eaten still warm and rolled in sugar. After that, it was time to take a look at the market itself.



To be honest, I was a little disappointed in the marketplace. It was very nice, and looked very nice, but there wasn't a huge amount of stuff to get there. There was kitchy handmade xmas decorations, and various types of food and drink, and loads of stalls selling prague souvenirs, but not a huge load else - and stuff was repeating itself about every 4th or 5th stall! The markets that I was in in Brussels and Leuven 2 years ago when I was over visiting Sara actually had a lot more to offer goods-wise. But hey, at least we were there and not at home!

Next thing, as we were heading down towards Wenceslaus square to see the other market, it started raining. That wasn't what we came over for, we can get that at home! The rain pretty much settled in for the night, so after the markets were winding up and we were fed and stuff, there wasn't much motivation to go off exploring for a nice night-spot in the rain, so was back to the hotel. Turns out the hotel bar had something in common with our room - we couldn't get into either on our own! So, was an early night.

The next morning, we decided to do a bit of touristy stuff before we started the real business of the trip, so we went up to the castle. the rain had turned to snow overnight, but the ground was wet so it wasn't sticking, it just made things a bit more slippery. In the castle I found myself pretty much retracing the same paths I'd gone the last time I was there - is funny how things come back to you. We could have taken a funicular to the top of the nearby hill to a sort of mini-eiffel tower called Petrin, but as it was still a bit snowy and overcast the poor visibility wouldn't have made the trip worthwhile, so we set about the main reason of the trip - shopping for xmas pressies! :-)

Contrary to our expectations before we went over, the shopping wasn't done a little bit here and a little bit there - because there was a lot less on the market than we'd thought, I think we got pretty much everything in one of the stalls and one of the shops off the main square! It was also somewhat curtailed by the fact that the bedroom safe had locked shut on us that morning and the hotel staff had had to call in whoever made the safe to open it for us while we were out, so the only money we had was the walking-around money I'd put in my wallet the night before - or about 1/3 of what we'd brought over with us! By the time we got back to the hotel to find the open safe, we'd pretty much bought all that we reckoned we were going to buy, so the rest of the day was just spent wandering around at random with no particular objective or destination in mind - I think we ended up sitting in some cafe with a baileys coffee (for Michelle) and a beer (for me), watching the world go by.

The next day we had an afternoon flight, so there wasn't really any time to do anything before we had to pack up and go home. Turns out that we got to teh airport stupidly early - I'd estimated it'd take about 35-40mns to get to the airport by taxi, and it only took 20 in the midday traffic, and then the flight was at 3:15 when I'd thought it was at 3. So, we were there close on 3hrs before the flight! And then, naturally, just as we were wandering towards the gate after killing as much time in the duty free as we could, the flight was almost inevitably delayed! The flight coming in was late, we were boarding when we should have been taking off, we lost more time de-icing the wings and eventually took off about an hour late! Ah well, it wouldn't be a trip abroad without a delay somewhere would it?

So, that was the lats of our big pre-planned trips out of the way, have to start thinking about the next one. So, would I go back to Prague? Probably, during the summer. Would I go back to the xmas market there? Probably not.