prague

a couple weekends ago, i went to prague with a friend of mine. no sightseeing plans or things to do in mind, we are just starting to enjoy the concept of the ladies only weekend trip. last year we went to berlin with another friend and had a blast. actually i am a little ashamed to say that we go to these great places and all we really care about is the food and shopping. well, all europe is the same, right? >_>


the cuisine seemed to be pretty much meat and potatoes/bread and cheese but still tasty and fairly inexpensive. we happened to wander into restaurace trilobit on a side street of one of the busier areas. lucky for us, the beer was cheap and the place was good despite being mostly empty. i ordered a steak in gravy with dumplings and what i got was what you see above. i was definitely expecting something else but the thin piece of beef was tender and the gravy was delicious, albeit maybe a little too sweet. however i wasn't too crazy about the 'dumplings' which was some boiled dough that was cut into slices. as you can imagine, the dish went very well with czech beer. the lack of patrons turned out to be a good thing as i later discovered that smoking is allowed inside.


one thing that is found on pretty much every pub menu in prague is chicken. to be specific, chicken breast with cheese. this one is from u cipu, another unassuming place we stumbled across. it was pretty full of both people and smoke. despite the smoke, my chicken with mozzarella tasted great. there was a bit of somewhat sour cabbage on the side that i also appreciated. i thought i ordered croquettes instead of fries but i guess there was a misunderstanding; i received them later when i was pretty full. what i was expecting was maybe two or three deep-fried potato and cheese palm-sized patties but what i got was a bunch of little balls. they were still good, but would have been better with some ketchup. what can i say, i am an uncultured american. (;


surprise! chicken again. this one from restaurance titanic was the one slightly dry chicken breast i got; the previous one was nice and juicy. the broccoli and cheese inside made up for it. also, i ordered mashed potatoes and i suppose i was expecting something creamy; this looks more like 'smashed' potatoes. anyway they were fine, the beer was good (and the same price we'd become accustomed to paying; 30 czk), and they had free wifi. can't complain so much, eh?


the one cultural thing we did was go to the sedlec ossuary a.k.a. the bone church. though small, it was worth the trip for me; although we did manage to screw it up a little. after arriving by train in kutná hora station, we were advised to take the local train to the bone church. in reality it is within walking distance but the actual city of kutná hora is not. we ended up waiting for the local train to take us back to the station for a long time, and then found out that the train back to prague wasn't coming for a few more hours. we decided to go poke around kutná hora to kill time and finally spotted the bus which was actually a van. wasn't so much to do there but we at least got some fries and a beer to tide us over until we got back to prague.

our tip to travelers that are looking for the bone church: walk from kutná hora station. the city proper is not a must-see, but if you need to kill time then you can either take a bus/van or walk it if you have an hour (each way) to spare. i think we wasted about half a day wandering around and waiting here instead of shopping back in prague. don't make the same mistake as us! (: