Ireland/Czech - Day 4

The previous day, I had spotted an Italian bakery near Temple Bar called Il Fornaio (“The Baker”). I decided that it would be a good breakfast spot for our final day in Ireland. We stopped in for cappuccino and cornetto – my preferred breakfast from when I was in Rome. 

I'm not the only one who loves cornetto. Check out this blog for a better description!

As it turns out, the bakery is run by some legitimate Italians - they were "secretly" complaining about their bad credit card machine (in Italian). Grazie mille! Afterwards, we stopped by Supervalu to pick up some Irish favorites for Lindsay - Digestives (weird cookie things) and Panda (tasty chocolate spread). 

These are the "good ones"...

After strolling down O'Connell Street to observe the statues and monuments, we ducked into Penneys so Lindsay could drool over the Irish clothes. Finally, we picked up our bags from the hotel and headed for the airport. At the bus stop, we met some Australians on an 8 week tour of Europe. That’s a long time to be on the road.

"The Spire" is a giant spike on O'Connell Street. Apparently it has WiFi.

We flew Ryanair from Dublin to Prague. Ryanair is nice because their flights are really cheap. However, they charge a lot for bags (like $100), plus they have very strict regulations on baggage size and weight. Honestly, we had kinda stressed out about it when packing, but it ended up being no big deal. The flight itself was actually very comfortable, if a bit cold. We arrived without incident and proceeded to pick up our baggage. On the way, we noticed an ATM and decided to take out some cash – about $100 seemed like enough, since we pay for most stuff on credit card to get the best exchange rate. In preparing for the trip, we had noticed that a lot of items are denominated in 100 CZK increments, which is $5 US. Since we wanted to get out $100, that would be $100 x 100 = 10000 CZK. Right? But they only had an option for 12000 CZK, which seemed fine. A few minutes later, we realized that we had actually taken out $600. Whoops. At least we had plenty of cash.

In hindsight, it wasn't actually that much. But all the bills said 500 on them, so it felt like we were balling.

 After grabbing our bags, we found the guy holding our name on a sign from Prague Airport Transfers. We decided that we didn’t want to have to deal with a Taxi or public transportation before we had figured out the city, so we prebooked a ride from the airport to the hotel. This turned out to be a great idea. Our driver was very professional and courteous. He was also the first in a long string of Czech people who spoke perfect English. We interrogated him a little about Prague as well as the Czech Republic in general. On the way into Prague, we had noticed a lot of fields that contained a very bright yellow crop. Apparently, everyone asks him about this but he doesn’t know what it is. He guessed mustard. I asked him if mustard is popular in Czech, and he says, “No?” like that was a ridiculous tourist question. In any event, we later found out that it is Colza, an important industrial crop that is government subsidized (and therefore prevalent).

Colza field near Prague. Not my photo, obviously.

The ride to the hotel was pretty long – about 35 minutes total. I’m glad that we prepaid for the car, since that long in a cab is usually pretty pricey. We were staying at Holiday Inn at Prague Congress Center, the headquarter hotel for the conference, since they had booked our hotel room for us. At some point, Lindsay had signed me up for Holiday Inn’s loyalty program, so we received “Preferred” status during check in, then discovered a free bottle of wine and some snacks in our room. I love being Preferred!

Our free wine - Pinot Noir from Czech!

 After unpacking and decompressing, we decided to head into Prague to get some food and drink. The hotel is a bit outside the city center in an area called Vysehrad (VEES-he-rod), so we hopped onto the metro to get to the Black Angels Bar, a highly recommended spot that was supposedly close to the action. As we were getting on the train, we realized that we didn’t really know the system. We stood around inspecting the ticket machine (in Czech) until a friendly local helped us out. It’s actually a very simple system – 24 CZK gets you 30 minutes of unlimited travel, whereas 36 CZK gets you 90 minutes of unlimited travel. A day pass is about 100 CZK. The tickets work on virtually everything – subway, trams, etc. – though there is a zone system which we never did quite figure out. Everything is on the honor system – our honor was only questioned one time on our whole visit. More on that later.

The escalators in the Prague metro stations are super steep! Not my picture.

When we got off the train, we popped out at the Rudolfinum, the preeminent concert hall in Prague, home of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and current venue for Prague Spring International Music Festival. This relatively new building (built in 1876) is right on the banks of the Vltava and provided a great spot to take some pictures and get our bearings. 

Rudolfinum during the day.

(I decided that if something was wrong on the map, it had to be the location of the metro stop and not the location of the river. I was right!) We aimed for the Black Angels Bar, but got distracted by the beauty of Old Town Square. Especially when you are discovering it for the first time, it’s just one spectacular building after another. We ended up eating at U Prince, the restaurant right outside the Black Angels Bar, since we wanted to enjoy the beautiful view and weather. Although we would come to find that we were in a bit of a Tourist Trap, the food was great and the atmosphere was awesome. I had the Pappardelle Bolognese and Lindsay had the Lamb Chops. I had to help Lindsay a bit, since her dish was big. 

Told you it was big.

I also had my first Czech beer. I wasn’t sure what to order, so I just asked the server for his recommendation. He was like, “You want beer?” so I said, “Yes” and that was that. 

Mystery Beer!

After he brought it out, I asked him what it was. At first, he told me it was Czech for “The Old Source” (which is Pilsner Urquell). However, when pressed for the English name, he indicated that it was written on the side of my mug – Staropramen, another local beer. So who knows. The total for our meal was 880 CZK ($44 USD), by far the most we would pay in Prague, but honestly a decent deal, all things considered. We decided to get some gelato from the stand out in front of the restaurant (20 CZK per scoop), then stroll around Old Town Square for a bit before heading home on the metro.