On to Prague

Surprisingly, there is no direct train connection from Wroclaw to Prague. We had to take a bus; it took five hours and was pretty crowded. Certainly not as comfortable as the train. (A fellow on the bus told us there were no cheap air flights to Prague either.)

Once we landed at the bus station, about 1:00 PM, we had several tasks to accomplish:

1. We got a map and a 3-day transit-pass at the Tourist Info shop at the bus station.
2. With the transit pass, we could get to the main train station where we bought our train tickets to Erfurt Germany (our next stop; the home of Martin Luther), and tickets from there to Berlin.
3. Get a SIM card to get Google Maps back online in the Czech Republic.

Task #3 turned out to be a little more difficult than we expected. Rick Steves' guidebook had said there was a Vodaphone stall in the train station. It moved or we just couldn't find it. We asked at the train station Tourist Office and he sent us into town. We walked around for about an hour and finally found the store. We took a number (70). They were currently serving 52. The store was surprisingly efficient, though, and we were done in about 15 minutes.

The next step was to find our hotel. We got back on the Metro and went to the stop closest to the hotel on the map. We have a saying in our family: "remember Koblenz." This is in reference to our first trip to Europe where I booked a stay at the youth hostel in Koblenz, which turned out to be about a 5 KM walk from the train station. (We didn't really know how to use public transportation at that point.)

We pulled out Google Maps and put in the address of our hotel, which turned out to be quite a ways away, down a mountain. Kathy never said those words, but I could see them lurking just behind her eyes the whole long, tiring climb.

When we got there, though, all was forgotten. We had a 4-room suite with two nice views, one to the top of the Vysehrad Castle Hill which we are right underneath.

All of this running around had taken up most of the afternoon and we were pretty beat. I hadn't ever had a chance to eat lunch, though, so I was pretty hungry. I got kind of car-sick on the bus when I tried to read, so I couldn't eat the sandwich we had packed. Kathy agreed to head into the center of town and get something to eat. We hopped on a tram just down the hill from the hotel on the river, and got off at the famous Charles Bridge in the Old Town. It was just sunset, about 6:00 PM.

Our guidebook had several recommendations for eating in the Old Town, so we took the map and just started going from dot to dot. The first one, in the Jewish Quarter had gone out of business. The second looked promising. U Zateho Tygra which is a "buzzing shrine to one of its longtime regulars, the writer Bohumil Hrabal whose fictions immortalize many of the colorful characters that once warmed the wooden benches here." We stuck our heads inside to a complete smokey cacophony.  I looked at Kathy and the look on her face said it all: NO WAY.

To say that Prague is a "scene" is really understatement. We had thought that Kracow was crazy with tourists. Prague is like Disneyland on the busiest day of the summer. There were so many people. There were also so many winding lanes; kind of like Venice. None of them are in a straight line. We were swept away by the rivers of people and found ourselves in front of the old Astronomical Clock.

Right off the square, down one of those winding alleys (past the Hooters) we finally found recommendation #4, Restaurace Mlejnice ("The Mill"), "a fun little pub strewn with farm implements and happy eaters, located just out of the tourist crush two blocks from the Old Town Square." It was just what we were looking for. Both of us had soup (cabbage with sausage for me; SO GOOD). I had some goulash in a bread bowl and Kathy had some kind of cheese dish. We even had desert. It was just what we wanted.

After dinner, we walked back to the square. The tourist throngs, of every nationality, had not abated in the least. Everyone was running around snapping pictures.

Slaves to conformity that we are, we did the same. Then, we pulled out Google Maps and followed it out of the maze, back to the tram and to our hotel.