Arrival
We arrive on Easyjet about 15 minutes late at 12:15 PM. Czech customs is quick and baggage claim is also pretty fast. We exit into the main terminal and easily find our King’s Court Hotel driver. We are at the hotel in about 30 minutes.
Hotel
King’s Court Hotel was selected for two basic reasons. Good location and a swimming pool for our grand daughter, Maddie. We are meeting our daughter, Amy and her family in Prague after their visit to Paris. The hotel is very nice with good facilities, staff, and rooms. It is on a square which has a subway entrance and above ground trams.
Day 2 – sunday PM
When we arrive, Maddie is there with her father to greet Nonna. Amy and Sara are out doing laundry and are expected back in 20 minutes or so. Amy and family arrived from Paris yesterday afternoon. The hotel has a cafe outside, so we sit and have drinks as we wait for them. They arrive with bundles of clean laundry which they take up to their rooms. When they return, we have lunch.
After lunch, I walk across the square to a bank with an ATM and get about 2500 Krona’s (for about $127). Then Sara leads us to Old Town Square where there is an outdoor music festival. Square is fairly crowded and there is a mariachi band playing. Maddie gets a “turtle” or more properly a trdelnik which is street food consisting of rolled dough topped with sugar.
We then walk to where Sara spent a semester in Prague while she was studying at SUNY New Paltz. The building is being remodelled so is shrouded in netting and is closed as it is Sunday. We then walk across a bridge to catch the #22 tram to do some sightseeing. We ride for a while and then Amy uses Goggle maps to find a stop where we can catch the #6 tram back to the hotel.
Back in the area of the hotel, we look for a place to stop for a drink. Rather than stopping at the same hotel cafe, we walk down a few blocks to another outside cafe. We have a little trouble finding 6 seats together so we have to wait a bit as a table clears. As we are standing and waiting, a rather rude waitress loudly says “excuse me” as she pushes by us. We sit and order Coke Lite (not Coke Zero) and beer from that same waitress. When another server brings the drinks, Amy immediately notices that Coke Zero is being put on the table and she refuses to let him put them down. A minute or two later, the rude waitress returns to explain that in “Praha”, Coke Lite and Coke Zero are the same thing!! Amy strongly disagrees, so we leave 200k (about $10) on the table and go BACK to the our hotel’s cafe!! Maddie has a lemon sorbet and the rest of us get drinks. They do not have Coke Lite (but they understand the difference) so those having soft drinks simply get glasses of ice and Amy goes upstairs to get some Coke Lite she has stashed in her room! I order “chips” which turn out to be fresh cut fried potato slices which are very good. After eating, we agree to meet in the lobby at 7:15 PM for dinner. So up to the room for a nap.
For dinner, Amy had picked a place but the hotel staff could not reach them by phone so they suggest an alternative. Amy uses Google maps walking directions and we find the place in about an 8 minute walk.
The restaurant is upscale with very fancy menu. They have a “tastings” menu for a mere $175 per person, with wine, of course. We decide to stay but order al la carte. Mark has steak with foie gras, Margi & Sara have caesar salad with duck, Amy has pork, I have bouillabaisse, and Maddie shares Mom and Dad’s entrees. Food is good and artfully prepared but portions are small.
After dinner, we walk to Old Town square and have a horse drawn carriage ride in the fading light. We walk back to the hotel around 10 PM and pack it in for the night.
Day 3 – monday
We sleep ok-ish. We cannot get the AC to work, so we try opening a window and using the noise machine on iPhone but the noise from the square below is too much. So, we close the window and throw off the sheets.
We meet at 9:20 AM in the hotel dining room for breakfast. The breakfast service is very good, very complete, with even an omelet station. We finish breakfast around 9:50 and to to the lobby to wait for our guide, Nora. Nora is a 40’s something woman who has a 6 year old child. She is Czech and her English is good but with an obvious accent. We discuss our itinerary and depart from the hotel. (See General Info page for details on how to contact her.)
We start by heading to the Old Town square. We have been there yesterday, but Nora points out things we haven’t seen and provides us with historical details. She takes us into a cafe along the way that has a noteworthy art deco interior. She also takes us by a huge sculpture Kafka head that has a revolving face.
We take a tram across the river to a funicular that goes up near Prague Castle and up to the “Eiffel Tower” of Prague from which we get a great view of the city. There is a 20 minute wait for the elevator to the top, so Nora and Sara wait while the rest of us have some refreshments in the cafe at the base. Ride to the top is in a slow, cramped elevator but is better than taking the 299 steps up. At the top, the views are great, but my camera battery has died, so just one pic using my phone.
After tower, we go one tram stop to church where Infant of Prague is located. Amy is very emotional about this as she remembers how my mother (her grandmother) spoke about it with reverence. My mother visited Prague about 25 years earlier when Margi and I sent her on a paid trip with her youngest brother Eddie to visit the then Czechoslovakia to see the birth place of their father, John Matyas. During that visit, my mother celebrated her 80th birthday with her long lost relatives somewhere north of Bratislava.
While seeing the Infant of Prague, we saw a display of the many costumes that the Church officials change about 10 times per year. We then visit the gift shop where Nonna buys Maddie Holy Water and a vessel to hold it on that she can mount on the wall in her room (if her Mom lets her!!). More Infant of Prague pics.
We are out of time on our tour, so Nora takes us to our tram stop that will take us to our hotel. We have been out for 5 hours and the older members of our group (Margi and I) are spent. We go back to the hotel and then walk to the Old Town Square to find an Italian restaurant for lunch. We finish at about 2:30 PM.
Maddie and I return to the hotel to swim (remember the hotel was selected because it has a pool) and the others go to seek antique shops. Maddie and I play in a small soaking pool and then end up with a shower and a dry sauna. We go back to the room to change and then go out for Trdlych (turtle) with ice cream for Maddie. Maddie has her treat in the square outside our hotel and then we return to her room where we find Sara. I go back out to purchase tube socks which I forgot to pack!! Back to the room and meet Margi and we nap before dinner.
We meet for dinner at 7:20 PM in the lobby. Sara has made reservations for a Czech restaurant across the square but unfortunately, for an inside table. We all agree to have Czech food, so Margi and Sara have turkey schnitzel, Amy has goulash, and I have goose leg. The only exceptions are Mark who has steak and Maddie who has pasta. In fairness to both of them, Mark tried to have pork knee but they were OUT and Maddie enjoyed some of Nonna’s turkey schnitzel. I shared one of my beers with Sara in honor of her pub crawling days in Prague when she spent a semester here. Mark and Amy pay for dinner.
After dinner, we decide to go to the Charles Bridge on 15 tram. Bridge is crowded but interesting. Margi and I are tired so we hop a 15 back to the hotel and go to bed.
Day 4 – tuesday
Today, we have decided to split up with Amy and her family getting out around 8:15 AM. We sleep in until about 9:30 and then come down for a late breakfast. We have no real plan, but we just want an easier day. After breakfast, we walk to Old Town Square and decide to take a Hop on Hop off bus. We find a sales person who is an Egyptian archeologist who spent some time in Seattle and speaks perfect English. It takes a few minutes to complete the ticket purchase after which we examine their map and decide on the best route to visit the Monastery.
We take the Blue bus from Old Town Square about 3 stops to get to the Red line which will take us to the Monastery. We only wait a few minutes for the Red bus but have to fight an overweight Indian woman who is trying to get seats for all nine in her party. We arrive at the Monastery bus stop but are really about one block from the entrance which we identify by the groups of teenage students gathering to go in. We walk into the courtyard and up to the ticket office to find that the Monastery is closed from 11:45 to 1:00 and we have arrived at 11:50 (late breakfast and delay getting hop on hop off tics, etc). So we find a place within the grounds and have beer/coke lite and relax for about 30 min.
At about 12:30, we decide to bag the Monastery and we head back to the hop on hop off bus stop and wait for a bus. After about 15 minutes, we board a Green bus only to find out that there are multiple hop on hop off companies and we are on the wrong bus. But, they are kind enough to let us off 5 minutes down the road at the correct stop and we wait only about 2 minutes for our bus.
We have decided to go to the New Town area as we have heard that it is less touristy and offers better food choices. On the trip, we strike up a conversation with a middle aged couple from Tennessee. The woman uses a cane and so has some trouble walking. When we reach New Town, we get directions from the bus guide and walk down a block and then turn right. We find a restaurant with outside seating on a street with a park in the middle. We have lunch, Margi getting goulash (without potatoes or veggies?) and I forgot what I had.
We walk around New Town a bit and then back to the hop on hop off stop. We board the bus to find our Tennessee friends are on the same bus again. We ride to a stop near our hotel and walk back to take a nap.
For dinner, we meet up with Amy, Mark, Maddie, & Sara. We have no reservations and simply head toward the area where we had our “expensive” dinner. We find the right courtyard and Maddie picks an Italian place. Service turns out to be incredibly SLOW and the ladies go to a near-by shop to kill some time. Finally our dinner arrives with Nonna & Maddie having pasta, Sara a Caesar salad, Amy goulash, Mark steak, and I get pork knee which I eventually share with Mark (he is a growing boy, you know).
After paying for dinner, we go over to a near-by shop and buy Maddie a puppet she wants. We say goodbye to them as they are leaving VERY early to return to the USA. Our’s is a noon flight to Budapest.
Day 5 – wednesday
We get up relatively early, have breakfast, and back to the room to pack. We go down to the front desk and settle our bill. Then take a hotel arranged limo to the Prague airport. Check-in on Czech airlines is no problem. After waiting for boarding, we are loaded into a bus to go out to the plane on the tarmac. After boarding, there is some delay so we leave about 30 minutes late. We have exit row seats, so all our carry on’s have to go into the overheads. Everything on board is al a carte but we don’t bother ordering anything on what is a relatively short flight.
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