Europe 2025 part 4: Prague

The City of a Hundred Spires. The Golden City. The Mother of Cities. The Heart of Europe. Prague has a lot of nicknames, which have come about for various reasons. Coming from across the pond, I found it very similar to Budapest, what with its rich history, remarkable architecture, and a river bisecting it (the Vltava River in this case). I have a hard time recalling what I saw in which city, so at my age I probably could have gotten by with visiting just one of these cities. Nonetheless, I have photos and notes, so off I go describing stuff for posterity.

Oh, and it’s actually more like 500 spires. So. Many. Spires.

The Czech language is a Slavic language and seems quite similar to Croatian (also Slavic), especially after enduring Hungarian for a few days. Czechia’s currency is the crown, or koruna. Yep, we had to get used to different math yet again.

Our place in Prague wasn’t as cool as the one in Budapest. It was in a residential neighbourhood where the ex-pats and diplomats live, a ways out of the central part of the city. This should have made for quieter environs, except the park across the street happened to have some sort of music festival during our stay, so we felt some serious bass for a few nights. By law, there can’t be excessive noise after 10pm, so I’m not sure why that was tolerated. Our place was also situated above a bar, although I think that was in the basement and we were on the second floor; thankfully we didn’t have any issues there. It turned out to be a gay bar too, we learned later… pretty glad Reuben and I didn’t unwittingly decide to have a drink there!

So... beer. Czechs apparently drink more beer per capita than any other nation. And Pilsner Urquell is the dominant brew in the city. So ubiquitous in fact that we got sick of not being able to order much else (beer-wise) at a restaurant. But with some determination and exploration, we managed to branch out a bit and find some variety.

Found a craft beer place!

The location of Prague has been settled since centuries before Christ, and the city itself came about well over a thousand years ago. One of its most important features is what is now known as Prague castle, whose first iteration was built in the 800s. In the castle complex, St. Vitus Cathedral is a prominent piece of Gothic architecture. Its construction was started in 1344 and took about 600 years to finish. It houses the tombs of a number of Bohemian kings and Holy Roman emperors.

Castle hill at night

Castle hill by day

But first things first! Carrie and I had an appointment at the Canadian embassy. The night before, I’d gathered up all the things we needed to try and get new passports. Just one little problem: I couldn’t find our passport photos. Ah well, I’ll look for them in the morning. Well, morning came and I simply couldn’t find them; I remember receiving them where we had them taken, and then… no recollection at all.

We hit the streets looking for another photo place, but nothing was open yet. We even tried a photo booth in the subway, but it didn’t cooperate. The subway also had an ATM, and I took out some money because cash can be handy to have. Less handy was the machine puking out a single bill (2000 Czech crowns), the equivalent of $140. I knew it would be like trying to use a $100 bill in Canada, but I tried to break it anyway at a convenience store. The clerk looked at me like “yeah right” and refused to take my splendid new banknote. So, somewhat apprehensively, we headed to the embassy anyway, as I wondered how I’d gotten so senile so quickly.

At our appointment, we explained our situation. They took what documents we had, then directed us to a photo place not too far away. By this time such shops were open, so we took a bus to the photo shop, got yet another set of passport photos taken (and she happily broke our giant banknote, yippee), and brought the mug shots back to the embassy.

So we’d been informed at the embassy that a regular passport application couldn’t be processed in time because regular passports are printed in Canada and that would take too long (weeks). So we had to apply for temporary passports as well as submit applications for regular passports (which was fine because ours expire next May). So we paid for the regular 10-year passports, and then an extra $120 each for the temporary passports. As long as we mailed in the temporary passports once we got home, they’d send us our new normal passports.

Oh yeah, the embassy lady also said the temporary passports would take up to three days to get done. And we were like, yeah but we need to jump on a plane in two days, so… that. She said she’d do her best, and that was where we left it.

With all that stuff done and out of our hands, we headed out to see what Prague was all about. First stop was the castle complex and the cathedral. After paying to see cool things in Budapest, we didn’t feel the need to do the same here. We just wandered around and enjoyed the buildings from the outside. It was pretty busy too, with lots of tour groups at the complex. Pretty happy not to rub elbows with all those tourists inside the buildings.

The castle was on a hill and offered a good view of the city.

We headed downhill back toward the river and the old town, exploring and enjoying the streets and gardens. At the river, we had plenty of bridges to choose from, so we checked out the famed Charles Bridge. Unlike Budapest’s current bridges, none of which predate World War 2 (the retreating Germans blew them all up), Charles Bridge has a long history; its oldest parts are 670 years old. Like many bridges, being on it isn’t that exciting, although this one has 30 statues along it that one can enjoy while out for a stroll. After all, it’s a pedestrian bridge, so it might as well be somewhat interesting to walk over.

Prague has a ton of bridges over the Vltava River (18?), but none of the others are quite so famous.

Bridge entrance at night

Another famous landmark in Prague is the astronomical clocktower in the Old Town Square, with some of the clock mechanics being over 600 years old. I mean, it doesn’t do much. Just shows the regular time, old Czech time, old Babylonian time, time of dawn and dusk, time of sunrise and sunset, the sun’s position in the sky, the sun’s position in the zodiac, the moon’s position in the sky, the moon’s position in the zodiac, the phase of the moon, the position of the vernal equinox, the zodiac sign, the month, the day of the year, the day of the week, which Catholic saint day it is, and maybe some stuff I’ve missed.

During a portion of the day, a giant crowd gathers at the tower, on the hour, to watch as the clock chimes and figures of the twelve apostles parade across a couple of openings above the clock face.

We intended to make our way to the clocktower to see this spectacle, but every single time we either got there too late or simply forgot to show up on time, so over three full days in Prague, we never did end up seeing the clock in action. But that’s okay, because (a) crowds, and (b) it’s apparently a bit of a letdown following the hype.

One of Prague’s more prominent figures was the writer Franz Kafka, and there are various related points of interest in the city. One such item is the rotating Head of Franz Kafka designed by local artist David Černý. It’s made of 42 steel panels that can rotate individually; every hour during the day, the layers rotate to some choreographed pattern for a few minutes, settling back to the normal shape again. Also a crowd pleaser.

Another of Černý’s art installments is a collection of babies on a communications tower near our airbnb, the Žižkov TV tower. Ten statues of babies can be seen attached to the sides of the tower, like they’re crawling up and down it. The tower itself was built in Communist times, right through part of an old Jewish cemetery.

Looking at the gravestones, the Old Jewish Cemetery looks very crowded. Turns out there’s a good reason for this. Due to space restrictions when it was actively used for burials several hundred years ago, whenever they ran out of room, a bunch of soil was brought in to add a layer of earth in which to add more burial space; existing gravestones were often then brought to the surface rather than be buried as well. Thus, the cemetery contains up to a dozen layers of graves, and the mess of gravestones visible at the surface reflects many instances of multiple graves situated over each other.

One morning we headed to Vyšehrad, a historic fort containing a residence, a neo-Gothic church, and a cemetery; these grounds are east of the Vltava River, whereas Prague Castle is on the west side. Many of the original structures have been lost or redone entirely; for example, the original church was built in the 9th century, but the current basilica was built around 1900. For a time, Vyšehrad and Prague Castle alternated as the seat of royalty centuries ago. Now the grounds are a public park, and a great place to wander and enjoy the sights.

Quite the battlements

The cemetery is now Czechia’s national cemetery, with many notable Czechs interred there. About the only name I recognized was that of the composer Antonin Dvořák.

Well, the embassy pulled through for us, and after a day or so, we got word that our passports were ready! So we headed out first thing in the morning and picked them up. After that, Carrie and I took the opportunity to see the Strahov Monastery and Brewery. This was one of the few attractions in Prague that Carrie and I opted to pay for. Established over 900 years ago (but of course), its library boasts thousands of old books and manuscripts. Its Theological Hall and Philosophical Hall are beautiful chambers that are possibly worth the price of admission.

The church

Theological Hall

Philosophical Hall

Ancient globes. How accurate were they in the 1600s?

Fancy monk stuff

The art gallery

The church

Brewing has taken place here off and on at the abbey almost since its founding. We enjoyed some nice brews here; Reuben and Irene joined us for that.

White temporary passports!

As we meandered back from there back to the city centre, we came across a rather strange street sign that we couldn’t quite decipher. Still not sure whether it’s a legit sign or a quirky art piece (they’re a thing here).

We also noticed a serious uptick in car wealth compared to Budapest. Mercedes G-Wagons were crazy common. I thought those were pricey until I noticed the low-key Rolls Royce SUV (half a million bucks). Prague’s median salary is more than double that of Budapest, so that somewhat explains the fancier cars, but still, there were some doozies.

The cars with V12s

Maybe less expensive, but cool

Are we in North America?

It’s nice that Prague is a city one can just explore and see plenty of stuff for free.

Reuben had his eye on a building designed by Canadian architect Frank Gehry. We checked out the Dancing House, located beside the river.

One Tiktok-famous attraction is the book well. At the public library, an artist created a hollow tower out of 8000 books, then placed mirrors at the top and bottom, giving the illusion of an infinite tunnel of books. Irene and I were too mature to stand in line with all the other tourists waiting to take a selfie, so Reuben and Carrie did the legwork. Good job, kids!

And that was two weeks gone, just like that! The next morning we headed to the airport for an uneventful flight home from Prague (via Amsterdam). Luckily no delays, for it was Charlotte's birthday and we were happy to grace her with our presence for the occasion.

Down, down, down to the subway

Schiphol appeltaart