Prague Day 4

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It seems like a long time in Prague and it is. Originally we'd planned for 2 or 3 nights here to allow for delayed flights and to slowly recover from jet lag. When it was time to start booking flights, we realized that for various reasons we needed to fly mid-week so we added 2 nights to Prague. It worked out fine, but you certainly don't need that much time here.

Clay was up just before 7 am today. I wasn't ready to get up but it was too late to potty and go back to sleep. Plus Clay promised another nap this afternoon. We had breakfast at the hotel and were off to the closest tram stop beside the National Theater before 9:30 am. Crowds today were significantly lighter than Friday and Saturdays or even Sundays. As we still struggled to avoid the big guided tour group we heard a lot more foreign languages and not the weekend's overwhelming preponderance of English. The other thing that occurred to us was that when we reach our last week over here with the included river boat tours was how much we were going to hate it!

We took the 22 tram again. I validated my 2nd 24 hour transit pass. I forgot to mention that we paid 110 Czech krowns for it. That is about $4.50 and a 30-minute 1 zone ride is about $1.10 so we slightly overpaid probably but had the convenience of not buying tickets multiple times. We rode past the first tram stop for the palace at Prazsky Hrad because it was described online as a 5 minute uphill walk. We got off at the Pohorelec stop and had a described 10 minute downhill walk. It took us longer because we stopped at a From Prague with Love shop and bought a kitchen towel. We heard the St. Vitus Cathedral ring 10 am as we approached the controlled entrance portion of the complex. We didn't buy any admission tickets today, but you still had to go through metal detectors and a bag check. We went inside only the cathedral building where it was free (so not all the way down to the altar). We saw parts of the changing of the guards at both 10 and 11 am. Their guards wear dark sunglasses, in August at least. We backtracked slightly and walked mostly level and down hill to get to the main Powder Bridge entry near the tram stop we skipped on our way outbound. We returned to the National Theater tram stop. We thought we'd walk past the Cloister Inn to use restrooms but missed it! I wanted a last caramel trdlnik for lunch and we wanted to scout a dinner restaurant for tonight. It is between Karavella and a closer, Pilsner Urquell Original Restaurant location that claims to have a fully air conditioned downstairs. The 2nd one has the advantage of being closer and AC but it is more expensive. We'll see how far we're willing to walk tonight. We tried but the 1st location we came upon did not appear to have their ACed downstairs open around 5:15 pm or so and also they ignored us. Clay walked around the corner and tried to eat at a place with a sidewalk shill herding people in. They did not have an English menu except for exorbitantly priced dishes so I refused to order and we left. We wound up at our 1st choice Karavella anyway. I had a slightly different version of the excellent beef dish I had last night. It turns out it is called Svickova na smetane. Now you know if you ever find yourself dining in Czechia. Clay had pork ribs. The prices were about the same as last night but the servings were much larger and again in the heat we couldn't finish. Clay's favorite beer here is Kozel Cerny. We'll have to see if we can't find it at home.

It is after 2 pm now so we've printed our boarding passes for tomorrow's flight from Prague to Minsk on Belavia Air. Now it is nap time. I'll be back tonight to edit/finish this post. Done! 7:15 pm. We head to the airport tomorrow at 10:30 am. I hate flying, but words can't reflect how glad we are not to have to sightsee tomorrow. I say this is our last trip to Europe. Clay says he'd come back to take the Chunnel train between London & Paris. I've campaigned for that one more than 1 previous trip and he nixed it as too time-consuming, too expensive and too claustrophobic which was my main worry. We'll see.

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