Skip to content
Tuesday July 5th
Again, a mere 4hrs sleep. This didn’t bode well. Once I awoke, I just couldn’t get back to sleep.
My plan of the start of Tuesday was to get to the Old Town Square for 11am for one of the free Prague tours. My guide book told me they started at 11am and that was more recently published than a review online which stated they were at 10.30. Thankfully, the guide book was right and we were taken round the town by Deanna, a woman born in the Czech Republic, but who then was taken to live in Australia with her family at an early age. She came back to live in Prague six months ago after marrying a Czech.
The tour took in the Church of St Nicholas, the Rudolphinium, the Jewish Quarter, the old New Synagogue, the Powder Tower, the Estates Theatre and the Jan Hus statue, for a man who was a Czech priest, philosopher, reformer, and master at Charles University in Prague. He is said to have influenced the reformation.
One thing these free tours do is to plug their paid tours, such as the Prague Castle tour and a Pub Crawl tour. It’s been some time since I went on the piss for the evening to that extent and wasn’t something I fancied doing again. Seeing people on the tour, a couple of nights on the run, only served to confirm that.
Once the 2hr 15min tour was over, after which most people tipped Deanna around 100kr (£4), as I did too, I went back to the Rudolphinium as she said they held classical concerts there and it was the best place to see one sound-wise. However, when I went in, the gift shop was closed and there seemed to be no way to get in to find out about these concerts.
I then had lunch at the nearby KFC where I first found they had free wi-fi and with a meal that would fill me up and also give a free refill of Pepsi, you couldn’t say no. On the way back to the Square, I saw there was a concert at the Church of St. Nicholas at 4pm. I thought the line-up was that shown round the side, of works by Dvorak, Bach, Mozart and Vivaldi but it turned out to be a benefit concert for something. It was free to get in but with suggested donations. Again, 100kr sounded like a reasonable amount as the guy running it said it lasted 2hrs. In the end it lasted for 3hrs and was quite something.
Church of St Nicholas, Prague
As we couldn’t get into the Church of St James during the free tour, since they were closed at that time, and we’d been told about the gruesome severed arm, I went to have a look. However, I then found that the opening hours were 9.45am-midday and 2-4pm, which means it is open for the afternoon free tours. Anyway, I’d go back there another day.
I then went for a wander to see where I was going to eat that evening and to explore some of the streets I hadn’t been round yet. I came across the Staromácek, positioned very close to the Old Town Square and near to the Jewis Quarter, where I had the pork steak with pineapple and cheese (below), plus bacon dumplings (and no ketchup! Well, they did have it on the table but I chose against it). All very reasonably priced, there was no charge for bread, no attempt to sell me water on top of the beer I’d asked for and this turned out to be the best place where I ate during the whole holiday.
I got back to the hotel around 11.30pm and went via Charles Bridge for the second and last time during this trip.
This is the best restaurant I came across. You MUST go here!
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.