Prague

This year, for the first time since moving to Europe, I am not traveling to the US for summer vacation. Instead we spend our vacation in Europe where we were joined for two weeks by my parents and my brother Ben and his wife Heather. We spent the first week in Prague, where we rented an apartment big enough for all eight of us.

This was the first time any of us had been to Prague with the exception of Lisbeth who’d been there last at a teenager and didn’t remember much about it except that it left a positive impression. It’s a very pretty city (the scenic city center at any rate), with lots of great buildings and an amazing number of churches, often virtually next door to each other.

I don’t know why I was surprised, but I was. Prague is _crawling_ with tourists. But of course it is. It’s a beautiful, safe, and quite affordable city within easy reach of anywhere in Europe. Nevertheless, it was surprising. I don’t think I’d ever been to a city as dominated by tourists as Prague.

Having lots of tourists is a mixed bag. On the one hand it makes things easier. Signs and menus are largely in English. Waiters and clerks are prepared to speak English, even if it is rudimentary. But on the other hand it’s hard to get a sense of what Prague is really like.

The weather was remarkably pleasant while we were there. Perfect for wandering around and taking in the sights. The evenings on the Old Town Square were particularly nice.

We got to know our part of town pretty well, but several times we found interesting streets or areas that we’d missed. By no means did I feel like I got a full sense of central Prague.

Often my favorite part of traveling is the stuff that happens that you don’t anticipate. We got caught in the rain one day, for example, which encouraged us to get of the Charles Bridge and into “Lesser Town” where we found a cozy cafe and had some coffee while the rain died down. While hardly free from tourists, Lesser Town was a bit of a break from the crowds on the other side of the bridge.

The next day we went up to the Petřín tower, sits on a hill to the west of Prague. Although the tower is not terribly tall, the fact that it’s on a hill means the view of the city is impressive. There was also a playground and a “mirror maze@ nearly, both of which the girls put to good use.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the whole Prague experience was the goulash. We kept seeing it on menus, so we had to try it. As it happened, the first place we tried it turned out to be the best. It was utterly fantastic. So good that we went back to the same place later to get some more. But it was also oddly familiar. It was some spice to it, and reminded us of red chile dishes from New Mexico.

We ordered it again in another restaurant, and it was very different than the first but this time it was so reminiscent of red chile that I wondered if we weren’t being pranked. It was so close that if I’d been served the same thing in New Mexico I might have thought it was a little odd, but I would still have happily emptied by bowl. I said as much, wondering if perhaps I’d simply forgotten what red chile tastes like, but my family members agreed with me.

The whole idea of the vacation was to see some city and some nature, but without having to relocate too often. Prague was our urban week, so at the end of the week we re-packed our bags and hopped on a shuttle that Heather had hired to take us into Austria for our second week of vacation, this time in an entirely non-urban setting.