Nathan’s Holiday Trek 2006
Once again, Prague is really a feast for the eyes. There are so many beautiful buildings everywhere. There are also reminders of serious events. The plaque on this building commemorates a man who died here during the Prague Spring uprising in 1968.
January 4th: Walking around Prague
In the morning we set out on a long walk around the city. Our hotel was the Holiday Inn Express on Opletalova Street, right across from the train station. Good location, just 5 minutes walk from Venceslas Square. About one hundred metres from the hotel is a beautiful synagogue. Prague has a long Jewish history, and the old temples and cemeteries are a major tourist attraction. This particular synagogue is not a museum, it seems--there is no general access, but one can call the rabbi and ask for a tour.
The Prague couples were at it again, even on a Thursday morning...
Our planned route was to walk to the Charles Bridge, and then follow the Vltava river to the Jewish quarter. One general comment about Prague is that while it is one of Europe’s most beautiful cities, this beauty is spoiled by the relentless search for the tourist Euro. Shops selling souvenirs and various other tat are everywhere, and it is very easy to be parted from your money, especially since the Czech crown, at about 28 to the Euro, seems a bit like funny money until you actually stop and do some mental arithmetic. One warning: do not eat or drink anything in the restaurants or bars on the touristy streets. You will be ripped off. We stopped to have coffee in one such place and paid 620 crowns, or more than 20 Euro, for two coffees and one tea. By comparison, an excellent lunch in a restaurant frequented mainly by the locals cost us less than 500 crowns for 3 people, including beer.
We were amused by the precision with which the distance to the McDonalds was indicated, and by the apparent honesty of this shop.
For a photographer, Prague is a great place. Everywhere you turn, there is some photo exhibition going on--we stopped in to see the Czech Press Photo exhibition, which I found to be of a higher quality than the World Press Photo exhibition I see in Amsterdam every year. And if you need some equipment or film, there is an excellent large shop called Foto Skoda on a side street to Venceslas Square (Vodickova Street 37), which has a great selection of all things digital and analogue--especially for analogue photographers it is a veritable goldmine of used cameras, film, chemicals and everything else one needs. I stocked up on the Czech Fomapan film in medium format, at about 2 Euro per roll.
