This was actually the second time I've visited Czech Republic and again with the main purpose being to attend a Kempo seminar, sightseeing was limited, but we did have plenty of time to sample the famous Czech beer and meats!
Like the UK, Czech is one of several countries in the EU that have not taken the Euro as its currency. I made the mistake of exchanging £200 worth of Euros last year but I wasn't going to fall for that again.
Ben and I landed at the Prague Ruzyně International Airport at 10.30pm and despite having a piece of oversized hold baggage that came through separately, we were out on a bus to the city centre within half an hour. The modestly sized airport was efficient and fully equipped with automatic biometric gates.
We took bus 119 from just outside the arrivals lounge to Dejvická which is the terminal station on the metro line A (green). A single ticket cost 40Kč (Czech koruna) from the bus driver but if you had 110Kč in coins you can buy a 24-hour ticket from the machines, which gets you on the metro, buses and trams.
Note: your ticket is only valid if you stick it in the validating machine (on the bus/tram or at the metro entrance) which puts a time-stamp on it. You only need to do it once.
Day 1: Prague
The Wallenstein Garden and Palace (free entry) is situated right next to the Malostranská metro station, on the west side of Charles Bridge. As we were pressed for time, we only managed a 30 minute super tour of the grounds, capturing the fountain, peacocks, bronze statues and the artificial dripstone wall.
We wanted to see the castle as well but ran out of time as we had to travel to Karlovy Vary, but just to set the scene of the food you should expect, here's half a duck I had for lunch, which was almost twice the size of any ducks I've had in the UK!
Day 2 & 3: Karlovy Vary
We spent most of the 2nd and 3rd day at the training seminar, but managed to spend an hour or two walking around KV before we left. KV is a small town about 130km (2 hours) west of Prague, famous for its spa resort rich in iron and minerals. There is an abundance of hot spring taps in the town centre for you to taste (quite salty in my opinion), but if you want a proper spa you'll need to check in to a local hotel.
As our friend and organiser of the training seminar is a police officer, we were put up in the police station, which has a training room covered with judo mats and had all the martial arts training equipment one would ever need. We slept on the mats and used kicking pads as pillows, which was a much cooler (if somewhat uncomfortable) option than spa hotels.
KV is overrun by Russians. I'm not sure whether they were just tourists, or whether they've permanently settled here, but there were loads of them, to the point where some of the billboards in town would put Russian first, then Czech, then English. Of course this is what my Czech friends told me - I myself didn't know any better whether the people/language were Czech or Russian!
To my surprise KV is twinned with quite a few different places around the world (although none in the UK, I would expect Bath to be the top pick).
Apart from the beer and meat, if there's one thing you must try when you're in Czech, is a liqueur called Becherovka (38%) produced in KV, which is supposed to be good for your health (obviously only if drunk in moderation) due to its herbal ingredients:
For lunch on both Saturday and Sunday, we went to a local pub near the training venue, Ventura Pub Evropak - highly recommended and is where a lot of the locals hang out. The Pilsner Urquell was delicious and only cost £1.50, but the deal breaker was the meat dishes. After two days of training, I decided to go for the "roasted pork knee (about 1.5kg) with old Bohemian garnish", only for 214Kč which is about £7! You really have to see if for yourself:
It was epic, the most meat I've had in one sitting, and even a whole weekend of training couldn't justify it.
Day 4: Prague
I spent Monday having another go at sightseeing with Ben, and the weather was perfect for it. We started at the National Museum and worked our way to the Astronomical Clock, Old Town Square, Charles Bridge and finally the castle and St Vitus Cathedral (sadly we didn't have enough time or korunas to go into the buildings).
I did notice there were quite a few people whizzing around town on segways, which really annoyed me as they were too big and they generally didn't have any awareness of other pedestrians. I risk sounding old and grumpy but segways really isn't my idea of fun.
Wenceslas Square in front of the National Museum
Local cinnamon rolls
Praha ham
The Astronomical Clock, the 3rd oldest in the world and still going!
Looking at Charles Bridge
Entrance to the castle
A gargoyle on the Gothic St Vitus Cathedral
Beautiful structure of St Vitus cathedral
Ben was flagging a bit after much walking around in the sun, so we decided to sit out the rest of the afternoon with Czech's finest. Ben ordered us a large beer each. Usually a large meant 0.5L but this place served 1L, not the worst mistake though. The location was great, down a quiet side street just outside the castle compound, although you do pay a premium at 350Kč for each beer (compared to an average of 50Kč for 0.5L we've been paying, this was quite a lot!) I was half way through munching the bowl of crisps until Ben noticed a sticker on the bowl saying 45Kč. I stopped eating and luckily either it was actually free or there was enough left in the bowl for them not to charge us, as we were down to our last pennies!
I think it would have been nice to have spent more time travelling around the country. There's so much in Prague that I haven't seen, and definitely lots more outside the capital around this former communist state. If I come back for the seminar again next year, I'm definitely going to take a whole week to explore. That said, this weekend was all about Kempo training, catchning up with old friends, drinking beer and eating meat, which were all very enjoyable.
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