Time moves on and so do we!  Today we’re in a beautiful, but very cold Prague. We travelled down from Berlin by train, passing through the snow covered fields of southern Germany and then into the rocky river banks that the railway follows once it leaves Dresden and enters the Czech Republic.

The first thing that hit me about Prague was how incredibly ornate and well maintained the old buildings are. There are hundreds of spires to be seen wherever you look.  On the churches, hotels, museums, street gates, bridges.  In fact the whole skyline is punctuated by spires.  I was surprised to see just how old some of the older time-blackened buildings were.  The beautiful Charles Bridge (Karlov Most) dates back to the middle of the 14th century.

Prague, especially its old town, is full of cute little restaurants and coffee shops, souvenir shops, obscure and niche museums (torture, sex-machines, chocolate to name a few).

We walked and walked through the narrow cobbled streets, stopping at one little café to try a special hot chocolate.  It was so nice! Almost like drinking melted chocolate it was so thick and creamy.  From here we headed down to the river and wandered over the Charles Bridge to get a closer look at the area where the Castle and Cathedral sit so prominently above the city.

We stayed at the Grand Majestic Plaza hotel, right next to the very modern Palladium shopping centre.  It’s a weird transition from the old and traditional architecture of the old town outside and the ultra-modern mall.  The hotel is situated halfway along a narrow street called Truhlarska and if you blinked you’d miss it.  However it’s a bit Tardis-like, being deceptively large inside.  The reception staff were lovely and very helpful.  We stopped for a quick beer in the hotel bar but found it all a little too bright for our liking, so wandered out and found some really good restaurant/bars just a stone’s throw away.  La Boca and Kotleta proved to be great ‘locals’ during our stay, with good food, cold beers, and great atmosphere.

The hotel itself is pretty good too.  We were upgraded to a junior suite, which had loads of space, including a bedroom, sitting room and large bathroom. It looked out onto the courtyard above reception.

Unusually, the suite didn’t have any ‘openable’ windows and had an over-enthusiastic heating system.  On a couple of occasions we had to resort to opening the French doors onto the courtyard balcony to cool the room down a few degrees.

It really is a lovely and pretty city to visit and is really easy to get around.  Most of what you need to see is within comfortable walking distance of the centre and even if your feet are getting tired along the way there’s no end of bars, coffee shops, restaurants and other ways of taking a break.