prague pics & impressions

We're home following a brief but cramped overnight flight. It was only 3 hrs and 20 min. but that's a very long time when you're supposed to be in bed. I did manage to doze, but both my back and neck were killing me by the time we arrived. We took a taxi from the airport -- a sweet and speedy trip at 6am -- and went to bed until noon.

Then we went to Tel Aviv to pick up our cat. I was so worried about how he'd be feeling after about six days alone in a strange apartment. He was hiding and wouldn't come out, but I soon found him and devoured him with affection and he was eventually back to his old purring self.

It's not really possible to take bad pictures in Prague. The place is a no-brainer for amateur photographers. I will publish samples (taken with my new 4MP Nikon Coolpix 4600 -- thank you, duty-free!) over the next few days.


View from Prague Castle




View of the Charles Bridge (from another bridge)


Some impressions of our getaway this past week:

drivers
They're nothing like Israeli drivers -- Czechs drive like they've trained their whole lives for the indy 500: fast, on narrow roads or wide, single lane around bends, they don't care. In contrast, Israelis speed recklessly, not in the deliberate, controlled manner of the Czech Rebublic. Because, although they routinely hit 130kph, they are skilled (no right turns from left lanes), respectful to other drivers (using the left lane only for passing), and courteous to pedestrians (stopping on a dime, whether it's a crosswalk or not -- I only heard a driver honk at a jaywalker once).

restaurants
By day 3 it was definitely starting to become a joke with us: we were having a fight with restaurant personnel at nearly every meal. The very first night we arrived, we chose a cute restaurant near the old bridge and got a waitress who was very sweet but didn't know much English. When asked if the seafood came with the shells (Mr. Squarepeg will have nothing to do with de-boning or de-shelling), she assured us that it did not. Turns out she didn' t have a clue what we were talking about. After waiting 45 min. for the meal, we had to send it back. So Mr. S. ordered "4-cheese" pasta, but what he ended up with an hour and a half later was just bad, expensive kraft dinner. We laughed about it, until the waitress came over crying and saying they'd fired her over the incident. Apparently she'd made a lot of mistakes already in her first week. (Turned out later that they were just blowing off steam and didn't actually fire her yet, but we felt so sorry for her that we gave her a huge tip.) That was by far the worst -- and priciest -- meal we had in Prague. The next day, at a nice cafe in the Prague Castle neighborhood, we ordered a capuccino after lunch, and then changed it to an espresso. The waiter, who had been told about the change 15 min. earlier, came out with the capuccino anyway, insisting that we ordered it and had to take it. In this case, the issue was clearly insanity, so we demanded to speak to the manager. The waiter went to talk to him and was obviously told to get over himself, because he simply erased the coffee from the bill and haughtily informed us that the manager was very busy. There was no tip. The next day, we had dinner at a place with live rock n roll music. I ordered only soup and mr. S., much hungrier, ordered a hamburger. Until I insisted, the waiter refused to bring mr. S's hamburger before he'd collected my empty soup dish. And even in the hotel dining room, they charged us 70 crowns for a capuccino one morning, and 100 crowns the next day. An error, so sorry. On the fourth day, at a "Texas-style" hamburger and steak place, we'd already learned to sidestep fights, but I couldn't help but comment to the waiter who brought us a basket of bread and a little dish of cold butter (with bits of pimento and other strange condiments mixed in), that he'd neglected to include plates and cutlery, specifically a butter knife. He then brought the plates, along with steak knives. Have you ever tried to butter bread with a thin-bladed, pointy steak knife? He informed us that that was the only kind of knives they had. Okaaaay. Ironically, the best service we got in Prague was at TGI Friday's -- now that waiter knew the meaning of good service, and we left there extremely happy. And then there was Don Giovanni -- a great Italian place in a small lane. And on our last night, we discovered Bandito's -- great Mexican right across the street from our hotel.

Hard to believe I never needed the AlkaSeltzer!

More later; I have to get up for work tomorrow!


Souvenirs in the Jewish Quarter (couldn't decide what to buy, so just took a picture of everything!)