Prague at spring

Stalls in old town square
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Prague, famous for its spring, subsequent soviet tanks, it child, saint wenclaus and cheap beer. Well there's a bit more to the city than that. I finally got to go to Prague about 8 years after i first was talking about taking a trip here. In some ways it may have being better to have gone then. Prague is a tourist city up there with any of best of them now and as such the inner city will be busy with tourists. The main purpose of my trip was for a stag/bachelor party for one of my friends, and i might note that Prague is also now a big destination for these parties for many Irish and English. So as to have seen some of the city through sober eyes i flew out a few days before the rest of the party arrived. This way i have something other than drunken debauchery to write about. For those like me on a budget, or if you just want to stay in a quieter part of town, try and get your accommodation close by the tram/metro system. You can get a week ticket for about €10(Czechs use the Czechkrone, I'm using euro as that what i remember the prices as) and the metro only closes for about 3 hours around 2-4 am. As with other underground systems probably the best way of getting about as well.

Some statue(i was lost at this point)
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Prague as a city is able to mix the sightseeing with the a good night life. Most of the must see sights are all located within a fairly compact area of the city. You can easily walk any where once in the city centre. These are just a few at random. St. Charles bridge – impressive bridge adored with numerous statues mainly of a religious nature with a guard tower a one end. The bridge is now only for foot passenger and seem to be the day resident of artist/photographers selling local landscapes or caricatures. Old town square - is Prague's tourist central, but is done very well giving it a market feel. The stalls selling souvenirs are of a high standard as are the various local food stalls. Note to the budget travellers, avoid the restaurants around here unless you want to be on a bread and water diet for the next few days, you probably pay triple prices around here. It also has the moving clock that draws big crowds every hour when it chimes but in all honesty is not all that impressive. There are a couple of churches that you can go into right of the square(lots of churches in Prague) and there was one gallery which had a Dali exhibit but this may have being a temporary one.

Prague castle
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St. Wenclaus square – not so much a square as a wide boulevard, filled with a lot of department stores but not really the designer names per say, also has the usual helping of fast food outlets. I noticed that you can get better food and shops on the streets just of the square. The squares main draw has to be the mounted statue of the man himself at the top of the street. Lots of photos taken here many from behind the statue making it probably the most photographed horses-ass in Europe. Right behind that is the national museum which is fairly good, has a bit of everything in it. I thought that they could have had some more multi lingual signs on the displays though.

St. Charles Bridge
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There's a lot more to do in Prague then i even got thinking about doing. You could easily spend a week in the city. I just walked around for a day getting lost and still not getting bored or frustrated cause there always seemed to be something about to keep your attention.

As for the night life, it is good but not great. As we did, you will probably go out around the city centre, you will be paying tourist prices and as we were told this is too expensive for the locals, and its true, most people going out were people on holidays as well. Clubs we went too were down near st. Charles bridge and are supposes to be the biggest in Europe or eastern Europe. It is over five floors so bring them hiking boots. If you just want a quite night this could be done on the cheap by hopping on the metro and going to somewhere just outside the city centre. Just for example, i went for a few drinks in a bar near my hotel and was paying about 75 cent for a pint/half litre where as right down town you could pay about €3.50 for a smaller glass.

St wenclaus Square
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Overall, like most tourist cities there's two sides to it, just depends what side you want to experience.