Prague, Czech Republic

My Christmas present from Austin this year was a long weekend in Prague. It has been one of our favorite cities in Europe so far! It was beautiful and the food was fantastic.

Where we stayed

We stayed at the Alcron Hotel in Old Town. It was a great location that was very easily walkable and the rooms were very nice and comfortable.

How to get around

We try to rely on public transportation as much as possible when we are traveling most of the time, but Prague ended up a little different mostly because Uber was so incredibly cheap. We basically never spent more than €6 going anywhere in town. We also did a ton of walking.

Public transit is also very affordable and was quite nice the times that we did take it. You can buy tickets from the machines OR as we discovered late in the game, from their app! If you buy a paper ticket, make sure you only validate it once - if you validate it more than once it will invalidate it! (Learned that one from our tour guide)

Things to do

Taste of Prague food tour

The best thing we did was on our first day we did a 5 hour food tour with Taste of Prague. Our tour group ended up being us and 3 other Americans, our guide was super fun and knowledgeable and the food we had was amazing! It was a great start to the weekend and a great way to get to know some Czech food (and also learn about the city and the public transportation!). I didn’t take a ton of photos because I was busy stuffing my face but it was awesome. They also give you a guide book and will help you plan your itinerary beforehand! I can’t recommend them enough.

Beer Spa

When planning vacations we like to look around and see what kind of interesting things exist wherever we’re going. While we planned this Prague trip we ran across a beer spa and had to check it out. You rent 1-2 tubs where you soak in a bath of malts & hops (apparently good for your skin?) and you can pour yourself as much beer as you want while you’re in the tub. Then you can lay out on their bed of hay next to a fire place to dry off. It was a very weird but awesome experience! I would very much recommend it. We did it at the end of our last day and I think that was a nice time as we went to bed relaxed afterward.

Charles Bridge

We did this at night since it was super crowded all the time during the day. We’ve heard this is another one that is nice to do early in the morning!

Castle

We went to the Prague castle around 11 one morning shortly after waking up. This was in tourist low season, on a rainy day, during the beginnnigs of Coronavirus scare and it was still SO PACKED. The biggest problem was that it is packed with tour groups and they are so in the way. We were a bit underwhelmed to be honest, but if you want to go we were recommended to go early early in the morning to get a better experience.

Lennon Wall

We didn’t really plan to see this but ended up nearby on accident. It was pretty cool! There’s a line of people waiting to take photos and it was raining so we didn’t bother with that. Worth a quick walk by!

Cold War Museum (Fallout shelter)

This was recommended to us and it was pretty cool! The tour is not expensive and it was a fun way to spend an hour. It’s in a fallout shelter in the basement of an old hotel. Link here

Letna Park

This park is huge and was full of people enjoying the day (and so many dogs). If you walk far enough through it you find a beer garden with an incredible view of the city. It was freezing when we went but we had to enjoy a beer here. I can’t imagine how incredible (and probably busy) this place is on a nice day!

Where to Drink

Anonymous Shrink’s Office

This bar was crazy! It’s a speakeasy inside another bar. Inside they give you a packet of ink blots and you pick one and then they bring you a drink based on the ink blots. We did cheat a little - I picked a super strong drink and they pointed that out to me and gave me another chance to pick! The drinks were all super unique. We went with friends we made from our food tour and everyone’s drink was great.

Hemingway Bar

We went to this bar late (maybe 1 AM on a Saturday) and there was still a line outside. It went relatively quick though. There are a bunch of rules once you’re inside - no talking to other tables that you don’t know, no talking too loudly, etc. The drinks are all super unique and I was thrilled when mine showed up in a gnome!

Beer

Pilsner beer was created for the first time in the Czech Republic and beer is literally cheaper than water at many places, so they really know their beer! Their dark beer was much less heavy tasting than any I’d ever had and that was what I mostly chose to drink. Fun fact, America’s “Budweiser” is not allowed to call itself that in the EU because there is a Czech beer with the name “Budweiser” already (with a very similar logo!). It was Austin’s favorite beer while we were there! Also, the foam you see is on purpose - you can even order your beer to be mostly foam! You still get the same amount of beer (the cups are bigger to account for it) and I guess the foam makes it a bit sweeter?

I don’t have specific recommendations for beer because it is basically everywhere. I highly recommend you get some though!

What to Eat

Now to the important things!

Kuchyn

This restaurant was super neat. Our tour recommended it to us. We had to climb up what felt like roughly a billion stairs to get to it, but it had a lovely view over the city. Instead of a menu, you get a four course meal where the appetizer and soup are a rotating thing. For your main dish, they walk you over to the kitchen and show you all of your meal options and sides in pots and then you choose and they serve it to you! It was very neat and very delicious.

The appetizers were Prague ham with pickles and creamed horseradish, chicken liver pate, and beets with what I believe they said was cottage cheese but tasted about 1000 times better than any cottage cheese I’ve ever had.

For dinner Austin chose beef cheek in red wine sauce with bread dumplings and I had pork shoulder in a mushroom sauce with potato pancakes.

Dessert was what they said was sort of like a “Czech cheesecake” - it was really good!

Banh Mi Makers

The Czech Republic has a large Vietnamese population because they had an exchange program when both countries were communist. I love Vietnamese food so we had to try to find some good food while we were there. Banh Mi Makers was a very small little place, but I was so excited to see they had Bun Cha on the menu as it was one of my favorite things we ate in Hanoi. It was amazing! Austin said the pho was some of the best he’d ever had. We would definitely go back next time we are in Prague again.

Las Adelitas

Since we’ve been in Europe we have been desperate for good Mexican food. A Texan living in the Netherlands now recommended Las Adelitas in a Facebook group and I wrote it down for when we went. I am so glad I did because it was phenomenal. I had duck carnitas tacos and they were some of the best tacos I have ever had. We also finished off their whole supply of Sol beer while we were there :)

Big Smokers

I normally would not eat BBQ outside America (and honestly outside the South) but this place looked so good on Instagram that I had to give it a try. It did not disappoint! We got basically everything and had no regrets, but I was particularly enthused about the brisket burnt end beans.