Prague
Mark Barlow's stag don't, 17-22 May 2012
Page 1
Having already shelled out for hotel accommodation and flights, the sad demise of Mark's engagement with Kate was not enough to stop us travelling to the Czech Republic in search of cheap beer and cheap women. Not particularly enamoured with the prospect of first having to drive to Stansted airport in order to get a flight, Matt and I chose to fly from Manchester. Which was all very convenient. It did mean, however, that we were only intersecting with the stag party's stay in the city for around 24 hours. We would be there from Thursday night (17th) to Sunday afternoon (20th), whereas the rest of the lads would arrive at Saturday tea-time (19th), staying until Tuesday (22nd). We could at least ease our way in and get the lay of the land beforehand.
But the best laid plans, etc. and the flight from Manchester was soon delayed, slipping through the afternoon hours as easy as the beers were being drained in the airport bar in Terminal 1. Free vouchers of £3 apiece for the wait were offered out, which purchased us a pie and a lemonade (due to no change being returned and alcohol being frustratingly not covered). So we arrived in Prague a little later than planned and it wasn't until perhaps 11pm that we got to the Ibis Hotel, about a quarter of a mile from Wenceslas Square (far enough away to confuse taxi drivers, evidently).
We headed up to our room to discover that we had been given a double, having specifically ordered a twin room. Matt was not happy at this and proceeded to get rather angry with the girl behind the reception as I didn't quite know where to look. It turned out that they had overbooked for whatever reason and given our twin room out to someone else. After a number of phone calls, we were eventually put up in the Ibis Hotel in the Old Town, shuttled across by a hotel taxi. The bonus of this was that it had a hotel bar, which we had a couple of beers in after a wander around the streets at about midnight gave us nothing in the way of venues. (We nearly got tempted by a late night kebab place since we'd had no tea but eventually resisted.)
And so it was on the Friday morning that we were chilling in a hotel restaurant that was open for public attendance, eating a very fine English breakfast. Finally, our holiday had started.
Satiated, we took a stroll, with Matt grabbing my camera to "improve" on my original shot of this building to show an arty diagonal.
I was handed the camera back (Matt had not brought his snazzy camera and in the end satisfied himself with his iPhone) in time to take a shot of this.
I know nothing about architecture, but my feeling was that Prague had something of the art deco about it, but I could easily be corrected. What was nice about this shot was the sweeping curve of the buildings. (Matt says he pointed this out at the time, which is true, but he only partly gets credit for it since I was eyeing it up as a possible shot anyway.)
A prevalent feature of Prague is the tramway. There was great variety between the fancy new ones and the rickety old ones. This was, obviously, one of the old ones. We never actually got on one in the end; savings made from cheap beer meant that we got taxis if we wanted to go anywhere far, but actually we just walked most places. We researched on the interweb to discover that you could text to get your tickets, which sounded quite cool. But as I say, we didn't try it out.
Our Old Town circuit brought us back round, but not before we saw a marketplace. It's not entirely clear what's being cooked on the spit. It's perhaps just as well we had already eaten breakfast at this point.
A short while later and we were taxied back to our original Ibis hotel, getting our third different room key (which was very difficult for memorising the room number), this time thankfully a twin. We set back out into the fresh air and, having already seen a KPMG around (boo!), I was very happy to pose in front of my long-time employers.
The eyes on this junction seemed rather excessive.
We soon found ourselves at Wenceslas Square, basically doing a reccy in advance of meeting up with the stag party. This is the view down the street from the National Museum.
And looking back up from further down.
We wandered a little further without much success in finding a decent-looking bar off the beaten track, until we reached the stage where we would go anywhere with a beer sign (it was warming up and round about lunchtime). We then found a seemingly tiny bar where we initially sat inside in its dingy surroundings, but our curiosity was pricked by the beer garden and, lo and behold, there was a peaceful quadrangle where we could catch the sun and sup half-litres of Pilsner Urquell, the popular drink of the Czech Republic.
Mmmmm.... beer.
It was here that we discovered how cheap it was. Seven of these cost roughly £10, and it was a further £4 or so for two bowls of goulash plus some bread.
The inside of the bar was actually more expansive than at first thought, and the gents had a good facility for amusement while peeing (the football swung freely when targetted).
Heading out back out into the streets, this proved mildly amusing for me.
We were in full-on tourist mode, even checking out a small park area. There are some photos taken with me lying provocatively on this unusually horizontal branch. Luckily, I don't own any of them.
One feature of drinking throughout the day and walking around was that we (well, Matt) often needed the toilet, which proved a jolly good excuse to find another bar. This was our next venue of choice.
It wasn't very busy and we were evidently a bit short of things to talk about.
This helped. I have a T-shirt of the right hand picture.
We rambled randomly on, going the wrong way due to my seemingly poor navigation skills, this time ending up at the river at a point where the had a musical boat, with a band warming up and people futilely attaching balloons to the front (futile as they kept bursting).
Talking of bursting, Matt needed the loo again so we popped in here for some cheap Staropramen (less than a pound, it seems). It wasn't the wisest decision since they insisted (well, we didn't really challenge it) on playing loud metal on the speakers, from which it was impossible to get too far. We supped our beers and moved on soon enough.
On the way back, we spotted this impressively-sized greenhouse.
We could not quite make it back to the hotel without one last stop for a drip and drop.
It turned out to be quite a high class establishment, as evidenced by this here gramophone.
Here is the view of the inside. As we arrived, we were offered shots of one of their concoctions by, I think, a large American gentlemen. We duly accepted (we also had lagers, naturally). The tables were gradually set and, fairly early in the evening, the first party arrived. But, for us, it was time to go. We would have liked to have eaten there, but there just wasn't time. We had a beer festival to go to later that evening.
More of which another time...
And that time is now. As I mentioned earlier, we got taxis to get around when we weren't happy to walk, and the beer festival was being held a little way north of the city, about £10 away at the Exhibition Centre Holesovice. Here is the view from the outside.
It was a bit disconcerting when we arrived as there were streams of people leaving, but we felt that, given that it was only about 7pm and it shut at midnight, we would have some opportunity to drink beer. The following chalked directions were very helpful and gave an indication of why it was so busy at the exit. Matt debated internally which way we should go.
Obviously that was towards beers and beer-laden women (we hoped) such as this one. Er, nice jugs?
This was the sight that greeted us. Not as big as the one in Munich's Oktoberfest that I went to, but still impressive nonetheless. We had to buy Tolars in order to buy anything, which was basically a token system to make things simple. Ten tolars were about £16 or £17 I think.
And two tolars bought us one of these beauties. A litre of pure gold.
We had been essentially drinking all day, but in a fairly measured way. This guy had clearly had too much, though. Amusingly, his friends tested his sleepiness by various cruel acts, such as pouring beer/water in his crotch and stabbing him with a fork. On the table in front of him, seemingly the world's largest sausage.
Matt got talking to a girl on the table next to us after some random bloke wanted to take a photo of her, joking that she was some kind of celebrity. Given that he had just me to talk to otherwise, and we were getting a bit tired by this point, it was fair enough. She and her friend were from Israel, although she was born in Russia, it turned out.
Matt and I had both got some cheap shades from the airport, but these weren't one of the pairs we purchased...
Well, I said those guys had had the world's largest sausage. I was wrong.
Not entirely sure what this was about but it required some pretty committed arse cupping.
Not that it bothered Ol' Bread Ears.
All the time we were there, a fairly decent band played classic rock/pop tunes on and off. They quite liked U2 it seemed, but to be fair played some Kings Of Leon. (Er, I think.)
It was getting to that stage of the night where you weren't allowed to drink unless you stood on the bench.
The tent was generally well-maintained, but there were some obvious danger areas, particularly in a concentrated area of drunkards. We did a bit of dancing - well, I stood around at the edge of the dance floor videoing some old guy dancing stupidly - I'm getting too old for this kind of thing (although he clearly wasn't).
The girls went their separate way, and we headed onto the fairground for some ride action, although by this point it was 11pm and things were starting to close. There was time for this swinging, twirling ride, which I went on (I'm in there somewhere) while Matt took photos (he's less keen on such things, especially after a day on the beers). Not having had tea probably helped me here, but I didn't feel any sickness issues - the people on the ground were in no danger.
And that concluded our first full day in Prague.
Click here for our next day(s).