Almost A Week in Prague - Part 1

If you remember my last post, I had talked about applying for a Schengen visa. Well the reason for my application is this trip to Prague, Czech Republic. If you are out of date with your geography like I was, Czechoslovakia does not exist anymore (a long time ago!) and it is now separated into Czech Republic and Slovakia. And Prague or Praha is now the capital city of the Czech Republic.

Our flight took off from the Soekarno-Hatta Airport in Jakarta at 12:40 am on Monday, and landed in Dubai very early in the morning. After a 4+ hour transit, we left Dubai and arrived in Prague in the afternoon.

DH graciously holds the spot for us for the immigration line.

The first few nights we stayed at a hotel a bit far from the City Centre, where DH has work to do on the first few days. No problem there. A great pub is right by the hotel, and a decent mall is attached to it. Hungry as we were, we went to to the pub right after the check in process was done. 

Potato Soup

Pork Knuckle with horseradish, pickled peppers and onions, and mustard.

They looked good, you say? Oh they tasted good too! 

After lunch we went and get familiarized with the mall, so we could buy things we need like yogurt (important during travel!) and water. Yes, water. To my dismay this 4 star hotel does not provide complimentary bottled water. We bought all these at the grocery store in the mall, and of course, when I came across the famous spa wafers I've been reading about online I could not skip out. I picked up the Hazelnut flavour. They are very thin wafer sandwich with ground hazelnut, sugar, and a dash of cinnamon. At Billa Supermarket these are sold for 59 Kc. per box of 10 sandwiches. I had read online that these are also sold fresh somewhere but we will talk about that later.

Hazelnut Spa Wafers

Having been so tired from our flight and also the jetlag, we crashed really early that day only to wake up before dawn. I am totally blaming it on the 5 hour time difference. We waited a while for breakfast hours to start and down we went, starving. This is what happens when your body tells you it is almost lunch time where we were coming from. Boy oh boy were we spoiled for breakfast! 3-4 different types of kolbasa (sausages) to choose from plus bacon, eggs prepared in several different ways, cold cuts, 3 different types of sliced cheese, cottage cheese, and a few other cheeses that tasted like herbed goat cheese and blue cheese (but I wasn't sure). Then a wide range of bread, buns, and pastries, and salads. It's a good thing I don't live there or I would overeat everyday!

Breakfast, first of x number of plates.

Since DH had to work that day, I stuck around the hotel area and we had lunch at the same pub as yesterday.

Chicken Caesar Salad

Pork Tenderloin stuffed with Kolbasa, with roasted potatoes

Awnings outside the pub

Street decoration

We had plans for the evening, I bought tickets to see the opera! We were going to see The Magic Flute by Mozart in Czech language with English and German surtitles. The opera was at the Estates Theatre, one of the oldest European theatres, operating continuously since 1783. We got the front row seats, not realizing that since we needed to read the surtitle above the stage, sitting at the very front was not the hottest idea. 

The Estates Theatre

Trailer behind The Estates Theatre

We dressed up nice, and went to the theatre. At this point I was a bit disappointed by the size of the building. The lobby was not grand, and it just looked smallish from the outside. Lets just say it's not quite what I expected for a theatre in Prague. People were also not too dressed up there. The opera was good, but maybe it was just not our cup of tea. The evening was cold and rather windy. I definitely did not dress warm enough for it.

So this concludes Part 1 of the series covering the first two days of our trip. Stay tuned for the next ones!