Monday 30 May: Just arrived in Prague. After a reasonable 10 hour flight, waiting for baggage. We met an nice NZ guy on the plane, who married a Czech and lives between here and Auckland. He said the Korea owns half of Czech Airlines and has a Hyundai factory here, so it's a big holiday destination for Koreans. Explains why so many were on the flight.The trip from the airport to Prague was a 30 minute taxi ride and no hassle (600 Korun, $40). We arrived at our BNB accommodation in Prague 1. It is in an older part of town, a bit down-market and full of young Czechs and a few tourists. After a short wait, we met our host and booked in. The room is no bigger than the one in Seoul, but OK. Almost immediately we went for a walk to explore the area and find something to eat. The area has a very European ‘olde worlde’ feel about it. The record stores are selling old vinyl albums from $18-$30 each! Here are some photos of our street and surrounds. We are in the yellow door building Number 2.
After being fed on the plane at irregular intervals, we were only a little peckish so our challenge was to find somewhere where we could have a snack - with a beer of course. We found a little basement bar nearby called Velryba which seemed cosy. The people were friendly and spoke some English. We ordered our beers, Únětické Pivo 10° and Únětické Pivo 12° - different strengths. Not bad, but not great.
For dinner we had a Royal Burger and Grilled Haloumi Salad which were both quite good. The burger had some prosciutto and cooked red cabbage in it and the chips were a popular type here, thinly shaved potato. The salad had green olives and capers which were a nice touch, although the dressing was too sweet for us.
One thing we’ve noticed here is the huge number of young people smoking. Just walking down the street you can almost always smell tobacco smoke from someone nearby. Restaurants indoors seem to be non-smoking, but the bars seem to allow it inside. The photo shows outside the bar/cafe where patrons periodically ducked out for a puff.