Prague on Our Own

Our excursions and land tours with Uniworld ended Monday afternoon, so we had all day Tuesday on our own. The public transportation system in Prague is extensive and very reliable, so we plotted out a course and jumped on a tram that would take us to Wenceslas Square. This also provided us with our first and only look at Prague’s New Town. We got off the tram in the middle of the square, which really isn’t “square” but a long rectangle in shape. We hiked up the hill toward the National Museum, even though we knew the building was closed for restoration. We knew that was the case, but some of the exhibits had been temporarily installed in a nearby modern building, so we took a break from the rainy day and saw a few fun things, including a couple of Mozart scores.

We left that museum and started back toward the tram, walking down the hill on the opposite side of the wide boulevard-like “square.” In some ways, it reminded me of the Ramblas in Barcelona, just with far fewer people. I guess they wanted to avoid the occasional drifts of rain as much as we did. We passed up the opportunity to go into one of the nice hotels or restaurants for a break, and also managed to keep walking past this intriguing store front. It’s always hard to pass a bookstore, but we managed, helped along our way by our complete inability to read Czech.

Once back on the tram, we struck out for the National Gallery, north of the Moldau in yet another part of the city we had not visited yet. The collection, housed in a new building with spacious galleries, is quite broad in scope, and we couldn’t have managed to see it all in a day, much less in just a few hours. We did manage to photograph a few items while we were there. The first thing we saw when we entered the first of several galleries we did visit was a large Klimt, though one without the gold that screams his name whenever I see on of those works. That was actually a treat, because we hadn’t been able to see the Klimts on exhibit in Vienna. However, I must admit this one wasn’t snough to satisfy us. We have to go back to Vienna.

By the time we left the Galerie, caught a tram back into Old Town, walked from the stop into the Jewish Quarter, we were both pretty much worn out for the morning. We had intended to visit the Old New Synagogue and the Cemetery, but the crowds and long lines made us re-think our plans. Lunch and some time off our feet won, so we walked on toward Old Town Square and a few blocks more to a restaurant that had been pointed out to us on Sunday. Pasta Fresca has a narrow facade with a few tables outside, and we didn’t know what to expect indoors. We ended up going to the back of the main floor, going down several flights of steps, passing the station where that fresh pasta was being made, and through two small dining rooms before being shown to a table in the third one. After all that moving around, we really were hungry—and grateful that the food was good.

By the time lunch was done we had time for only one more stop, and we made a good choice. We weren’t far from Municipal House, and the timing was right to catch the 3:00 tour. Wow. (We both said that a lot on this trip.) A huge Art Deco complex, with multiple restaurants, an American Bar and a German Beer Hall in the basement, a really nice concert hall that is also used for dancing, and several meeting rooms and salons, of different sizes and decorative themes, ringing the concert hall. And we never made it to the top two floors, where further exhibits from the National Museum are on temporary exhibit. Just check out the page of Prague photographs for a small taste of what we saw.

We left Municipal House at the end of the tour with the full intention of calling it a day. But we had one more task ahead of us: buying on of those cinnamon buns cooked over charcoal and coated in chocolate. We had seen them on our Sunday orientation walk, and it was only fitting that we try one. Delicious. We would do that again in a heart beat, and in retrospect, those food carts are one of the best things about Republic Square.

After that little snack, we made it back to the hotel and started the preparations to leave Prague the next morning.

Our first river cruise and the extension in Prague had been a success, so much so that I’m sure we’ll do another one soon.