Prague Diaries

Deepa Shah
Cycle Bell
Published in
5 min readJun 1, 2016

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Prague was exciting after the lull in St. Petersburg.

Two things got us out and about. One was spending time with an old friend who is living in Prague and the other was Thing 1’s pottery class. A lot in our schedule revolved around these two.

Here are a few of our experiences in Prague in no particular order.

Home for 10 days in Prague.

We were renting a place right in the center of the old town. You step out and you are in the pretty cobble-stoned streets but full of tourists (like us) even in May, awesome cafes and restaurants overflowing on the streets, segways buzzing around, big guided groups on tours admiring various historical buildings and the ever vibrant town squares with bands playing, kids running around and bubbles floating.

The experience of ‘old-world European charm’ is not complete without the pretty cobble-stone and narrow streets. But without google maps, we would have been going around in circles which would not have made kids very happy!

And beware of the aggressive drivers while walking on the streets.

A band on the Charles Bridge

Charles Bridge is beautiful and probably the most popular place in Prague. Its best to visit before it gets crowded, but go nevertheless. It is as vibrant as any town square.

Feeding the swans by the Charles Bridge is another fun thing to do with kids in Prague. You walk over the Charles Bridge, past the small streets and past the Kafka museum to reach the edge of the river. It is a nice peaceful place with a great view of the Charles Bridge.

Playground. A must when you are travelling with kids. There are many good playgrounds in Prague 1. We went to the one near the Ujezd street and spent the evening with my friend and her lovely family.

Městská knihovna v Praze — The Municipal Library of Prague

A library right in the city center and with a section of English books for kids. What more do you need?

The Yoyo Store

Our little friend introduced us to a whole new world of yoyo-ing. And Prague happens to be one of the top cities in the world of yoyo-ing and the World Yo-yo championship 2014 was held in Prague.

A very popular icecream shop in Prague

Most cities has this one really awesome ice cream shop selling just a few flavors but extremely yummy and one would queue for 15 minutes to get one. This is it. Angelato in Prague. My favourites are tiramisu and hazelnut.

Pottery classes at Terra Ceramics

She almost found her thing. She would have been happy to even live at the pottery studio. For her Prague is awesome because of the lessons she took there.

There are shops making and selling Trdelnik all around. They claim it to be a traditional Czech dessert but it is not. It is a traditional dessert but not Czech. It is found is many Central European countries. It is a soft thick cone, almost like a pastry and then filled with cream or ice cream. We didn’t like it.

It was really nice to meet Imro Vasko, my professor from Bratislava, and spend the morning looking at his studio and students’ work at the school in Prague.

Tourists packed in front of the Astronomical clock.

Prague has become a very popular exotic holiday spot. The old town, even in May is packed with tourists like us! It is even popular with Indian tourists. We saw many more Indians in Prague than any other place we have been to, except for Australia.

With tourists, came Segway. When you walk around the old town, you will see many Segways buzzing past. The locals absolutely hate it and soon they are going to be banned.

The crowd at the Astronomical clock in the Old Town Square is crazy. The clock at every hour has a small display of 12 gospels. This is the most overrated tourist attraction but the fact that the clock is 600 years old and working is more amazing.

I should have started with this one. The famous Czech beer. Czech people are very heavy beer drinkers. They top the list of the countries with highest beer consumption per capita. For Czech, it is almost 160 liters per capita.

And everyone smokes. The Czech do not smoke as much as they do in Russia or Japan, but still a lot. This makes sitting or dining out at cafes on the streets not as enjoyable, particularly when with kids.

Though I have not read Kafka, I really liked the moving sculpture of his head, in a square opposite the office of the insurance building where he used to work.

Example of Renaissance and Gothic architecture.

In Prague, you can see various architectural styles existing side by side. It is interesting for all kinds of people to see this ensemble and how well preserved they are. The reason that most buildings of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque era remain intact even today is because Prague is one of the rare European capital to have escaped the destruction during the World Wars.

We got a really nice city map from our Airbnb host. It was made by the locals with tips on places to see and eat like a local. But my favourite section was the one called ‘Act like a local’.

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Founder, Folly Systems. Living a dream, veteran entrepreneur, avid traveller, mother of two and married to an awesome guy!