Mademoisellen: My Adventures in France: Christmas in Prague

Prague was beautiful! I loved everywhere we went on our trip, but Prague was by far my favourite! All the buildings are gorgeous and it's small enough that almost everything is walkable. It also has a ton of history. And to top it all off everything is so inexpensive there, we ate like kings! Seriously, I loved Prague.

Day One December 22:

The first day we flew into Prague and arrived by mid-afternoon. We rented an apartment for our stay through the website Airbnb. I highly recommend this website, it provides listings for apartments that people rent out to visitors. We ended up using it for all three places on our trip with success. It also allows you to view ratings and comments by previous guests, so you can make sure the apartment and host are reliable (and not crazy psychos). We were able to stay in full apartments that each had their own kitchens. It was nice to have our own apartment to come back to and the kitchen allowed us to save money by having breakfast and a few dinners at home. We also had washing machines at all three apartments, which was handy as we didn't have to pack as much for the trip and were able to travel with just our backpacks. And, we saved a lot of money, as it was often cheaper to rent a whole apartment through this website than it was to book a hotel room. Our apartment in Prague was beautiful and in the best location, minutes away from the centre of town and within walking distance to all the sites.

After checking in at our apartment we heading out to the grocery store to pick up a few supplies for our stay (aka Czech beer). We then heading out for a nice dinner at a great little Czech restaurant called Krcma in the cellar of a building. It had a really cool atmosphere with dim lighting and candles dripping wax everywhere. We started with an appetizer each (a delicious onion soup and sausage in a beer sauce) and then had a traditional Czech main meal (beef with cranberries in a creamy root vegetable sauce, served with bread dumplings). We sampled a few delicious Czech beers too. Everything was really delicious and inexpensive (about 3 dollars for a litre of beer!). It was a great start to our trip. We had a nice evening walk back to the apartment and checked out some of the town on the way.

Entrance to the restaurant Krcma

Cool candles with melted wax in the restaurant

Mmmm our first Czech beer

Dave enjoying his sausage appetizer

Beef in creamy sauce with dumplings (delicious!)

The Christmas market in the centre of town

Prague castle in the distance at night

Day 2 December 23:
Our second day in Prague we awoke early (well early for us) to go on the Prague Royal Walk Free Tour. I read good reviews about this tour on Trip Advisor and it didn't disappoint. The walking tour lasted about 2.5 hours and took you to all the main sites in Prague. It was very informative and our tour guide, Chris, was full of interesting stories about the city. Also, it was free!! Woo hoo! If you know Dave, you know that he can't turn down free things, so I knew he'd be thrilled with this tour, and I was right! Although it poured rain for most of the day, it was still a lot of fun and I'm glad we did the tour on our first full day in Prague as it gave us an introduction to the city and allowed us to pick out the spots we wanted to go back to and spend more time at later in the week. After the tour we went to an early dinner at a beer hall called Lokal. We warmed up and dried off as we enjoyed some delicious Czech tank beer and some yummy food. I had the pork schnitzel and Dave had a chicken and mushroom dish. It was a nice way to relax after all our touring. We headed home after to rest up for awhile. That night we joined a pub crawl with the same company that ran our walking tour. For about $25 dollars we each got an hour of open bar at their own pub to start the night, plus entrance and a free shot at 2 local pubs, and then to end the night entrance into a 5 story night club that played different music on each floor. We also got a pub crawl t-shirt included in the price, as our guide said, "Not sure why you get a t-shirt, perhaps to help you remember that you even went on a pub crawl" haha. It was a fun way to spend a night in Prague and sample the local beer. We also met some other people, most of them were Australians from a Contiki tour group and they were a lot of fun. The pub crawl was a fun way to see the night life in Prague. We had the approach that it was a marathon, not a sprint and enjoyed our drinks in a responsible manner (aka I'm getting too old for this!). However, some of the pub crawlers were definitely trying to get their monies worth and went full force at the open bar at the very beginning. Let's just say that these people took the "crawl" part of the pub crawl a little too seriously and we witnessed a few of them "crawling" home early. Dave and I had a lot of fun and the last bar was about a minute away from our apartment, so it worked out great. It was a good night!

Rainy day in the Old Town Square

This is the Prague State Opera building. It was once used by the Nazi party for political assemblies.

Powder Tower: part of the old city gate and once used as a gun powder storage facility.

This statue is a hit with tourists. Our tour guide told us the locals like watching the tourists look inside (as it is faceless and hollow). Apparently one lady actually got her head stuck inside the statue while trying to peak inside haha.

National Museum in Wenceslas Square

Wenceslas Monument with candles for the former President of Prague Vaclav Havel on the anniversary of his death.

Trdelnl'k stand at the Christmas Market

Trdelnl'k (cinnamon and sugar pastry)

Sausages with horseradish and mustard

Pork Schnitzel with potato salad

Mushroom chicken with potatoes and cabbage

Tank beers

Dave and I enjoying the pub crawl

Crazy lights at the 5 story club

Day 3 December 24:
Christmas Eve in Prague is their main day to celebrate Christmas, so most of the non-touristy shops were closed and pretty much all of the museums and other sights were also closed. This is a day where the Czech people enjoy a traditional Czech Christmas meal (usually fried carp, which they sell at the Christmas markets in barrels of water right up until Christmas Eve). They also open gifts and spend time with family on this day. Dave and I decided to sleep in (nothing to do with the previous nights pub crawl at all...) and then had a nice Christmas walk around the city and across Charles Bridge. We explored inside a few of the churches that we came across on our walking tour. It was a beautiful day and was surprisingly busy out, it was nice to hear Christmas music and be amongst the crowds wandering around the Old Town Centre and the Christmas markets. We had some lunch at one of the Christmas market stands and enjoyed some kielbasa sausage and some delicious potato dish that had pototes, cabbage, and ham mixed together in a bowl of goodness. We also bought a few souvenirs at some of the Christmas stands, an ornament to remember our Christmas trip in Prague and of course Dave had to buy a beer stein to add to his growing collection of bar ware. We headed home to have our own little Christmas celebration that evening. We watched Rudolph and Claymation Christmas and had a lovely homemade dinner of pork chops, potatoes, and carrots. It was a nice Christmas Eve.

This view was practically across the road from our apartment

Crowds of people on Charles Bridge

View of Prague Castle from across the water

Church of Our Lady before Tyn in Old Town Square

The Astronomical Clock

Remember when Emily and Jef (with one "f") went to Prague on Season 8 of the Bachelorette? No? Well Dave and I remembered!

And we tracked down the same marionette shop! Score!

Dave poses in front of the shop.

Cool hand crafted marionette puppets

This old man was rocking that saxophone in the town square

There were all sorts of neat nativity scenes all around the town

Town across the bridge

Lunch: kielbasa and potato with ham and cabbage

Hot wine to warm us up!

Pig on a spit anyone?

Rudolph and Christmas eve dinner

Day 4 December 25:
On Christmas day we decided to tour Prague Castle. There are several buildings that make up the castle grounds and we purchased the long tour ticket that gave us access to pretty much everything. We saw St. Vitus Cathedral, the Old Royal Palace, St.George's Basilica, Golden Lane and the Daliborka Tower, Powder Tower, Rosenberg Palace, and a few exhibitions about the castle. The castle grounds were quite large and it was very beautiful. That night we had a special dinner at the Strahov Monastic Brewery restaurant located just up the hill from the castle. This is a monastery that has it's own brewery and restaurant on site. It was one of the best meals of the trip and had some of the best beer we have had. It was a special Christmas dinner and we really enjoyed it.

In front of St.Vitus Cathedral

Inside the cathedral

A nativity scene in front of the stained glass window

Hey look! Dave's making me climb up to the top!

View of Prague from the top of St.Vitus Cathedral

View of the castle grounds from the top of St.Vitus Cathedral

At the start of Golden Lane (lots of old houses on this street)

Colourful Golden Lane

Dave would not have done well in old timey days, look how tiny those doors are!

An entrance to the castle grounds

Look it's me!

Look it's Dave!

View of Prague and Prague Castle from the hill, climbing up to the restaurant

This is Prague's version of the Eiffel Tower, taller than Paris' Eiffel Tower , of course it's built on a hill so I'm not sure if it counts!

Dave's chicken soup

My onion soup with cheese toast

My beef goulash with onions and a mix of potato and bread dumplings. It was sooooo good and the beef melted in your mouth it was so tender. Delicious!

Dave's ribs with a mixture of sauces (garlic, sweet chili, and plum).

Dave's dark beer, he said it was the best dark beer he's ever had

My amber beer , so good

Day 5 December 26:

On our final day in Prague we decided to head over to the Jewish Quarter. This used to be the Jewish Ghetto and the only place where Jewish people were able to live. Today it consists of the synagogues, the old Jewish cemetery, and the Old Jewish Town Hall that make up the Jewish Museum. It was really interesting learning about the Jewish culture that existed in Prague before the Second World War. Many of the Jewish people living here did not make it through the war, and most of those that did, did not return to Prague. It was really sad thinking about how the war affected the Jewish people in Prague. In one of the buildings they have the names of all the Jewish people from this area that were killed in the war at concentration camps. We were not allowed to take pictures of this, but it was very moving and really put things into perspective. There were two floors of this building and almost every inch of wall space was filled with names. In some cases whole families were killed. I think it took something like 4 years for them to finish writing all the names, so you can image how many there were. It was very sad and moving.

The Jewish Cemetery, this was the only place that Jewish people were permitted to bury their dead.

On the left you can see the Jewish Cemetery again, can you see how high it is compared to the ground level? That is because they had such a small space to bury their dead that they had to start layering them. It is just one big hill.

One of the synagogues

Another synagogue

Inside one of the synagogues

After touring around the Jewish Quarter, we had to head back to the apartment to pack up and get ready to take our night train to Krakow. We stopped at McDonald's on the way to the train station for a quick dinner and to fulfill Dave's dream of trying every McDonald's in every place he visits. I have to admit, there were a few cool menu items at this McD's that we don't have at home. After filling up, we heading to the train station and settled in for the night. It wasn't the soundest sleep I've ever had, but it wasn't too bad and the room was comfortable. Plus, it was worth it traveling overnight because we didn't waste a day traveling and were able to explore right away once we got into Krakow.