Day 2: Arrival in Prague!

We arrived safely in Prague and easily navigated their fantastic public transportation system. There is a bus (100) that takes you directly to the end of Metro line C, which is the line that had a stop near our hotel. As luck would have it, our luggage was the first off of the plane, bus 100 was waiting for us, and we were in our hotel within about 30 minutes of landing.

Inside the Metro were some of the longest escalators I have ever seen. I'm not sure if this picture does it justice! Czechs are very polite on the escalator. If you're standing -- off to the right! The left lane is clear for those who choose to walk. On quite a few escalator trips, there was perhaps only one time when this convention was not honored.

This is an advertisement that was in the metro:


I'm not really sure what it's for, but there are Handel and Mozart as finger puppets! These dead composers would not be strong spokesmen in America. Prague has a rich musical history and we saw many references to classical music during our stay.

We weren't allowed to check in to our hotel at 8 in the morning when we arrived. They locked our luggage in a room and told us to return after noon. Even though we desperately needed to shower, we headed out walking around the town for a few hours. This is an outside view of our hotel, Ibis Praha Mala Strana. I didn't take any interior shots; if you care, I'm sure they have them on their website! Our hotel was very nice and close to everything. It didn't have much character -- inside the hotel, I could have been in Dallas or Tokyo for all I knew. However, we planned on spending very little time inside, so we were looking for something clean, close, and inexpensive. As a bonus, they had a fantastic continental breakfast that was included in our rate.

Here is the Lycee Francias de Prague (not sure how to get accents to work). Of course I had to take a picture! When we walked near here, we always heard at least 2 people speaking French.

Here is a funny street sign. I didn't crop out the background so that you could see the buildings and cars. I think the sign is big enough! Every time I saw this little man, I chuckled. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's his body language which seem so jaunty, but more likely it's the hat that he's wearing. It just seemed to fit right in to Prague!

We quickly found ourselves on Petrin Hill, which was only a few minutes from our hotel. We didn't realize that's where we were, and even after looking on a map, we didn't realize it. Prague is a city that is very walkable, so the map was drawn on a much larger scale than we realized. We'd made it much further on foot that originally thought! The following 2 pictures were taken while on Petrin Hill.

I didn't take many pictures from the rest of the day. We found a restaurant and had a meal, then walked around Charles Bridge just as the vendors were setting up for the day. We then went back to our hotel a little after noon. Our room was ready, and we each took a much-needed shower. We dressed and went back outside for some sight-seeing. As everyone says, Prague is a very beautiful city. It escaped wide-scale destruction during the wars and remains very charming.

Here is a picture of where we ate dinner. I took this picture several days later, as you can see sun in this picture. We did not see the sun for the first 3-4 days we were there. The food was delicious, and we had beer along with our meals. Neither one of us really likes beer, but it is very plentiful in Czech Republic! We drank it with most of our meals. We probably had more beer in these 7 days than in the previous 7 years!