I love this town! Prague rivals Paris and Buenos Aires in beauty. Where Krakow was reminiscent of the iron curtain mentality, Prague is western and welcoming. Of course, one of the first things I noticed is how gorgeous and flirty the men are so I admit my perception might be a bit skewed.

There are still some cultural things that we’re trying to get used to, however, since my Czech is limited to “Ahoy” (hello/goodbye), “dyekuyi” (thank you), “prosim” (please), and “pivo” (beer), I’ll over look Rule #3 of the trip, i.e., “just stand there and I’ll move around you.” Speaking of the Czech language, how can you not love a country whose greeting makes you sound like a pirate? Ahoy Prague!

We headed to the Castle District via tram 22, which has been branded as the tourist tram since most tourist sights are along 22. The Castle District neighborhood is gorgeous! If by some random turn of events I had to move to Prague as part of my expat relocation posh package, I’d negotiate a flat in the Castle District. The Castle was architecturally stunning! I’m not embarrassed to say that we posed with the Castle Guards. Those hombres could take a page from the British Beefeaters as they aren’t even subtle when looking around to see how close the tourists are to them. I could tickle a British guard with a feather and he wouldn’t move, but I had the feeling that if we got too close to the Czech guards, one of them would pounce on us and take us out faster than we could say Ahoy.

The inside of the Castle was underwhelming as it was sparsely furnished, but the views from the Castle were amazing. We saw more art than we cared to while touring the various galleries before admitting that unless the art is by someone we know, we’re not interested. We ditched our cultural ambitious and headed to the “Golden Lane,” aka Zlata Ulicka, which is Pragues smallest Street.

The Golden Lane is a quaint street that looked like it could be on the set of Disney around the corner from Magic Kingdom. On Golden Lane there are several mini one-room cottages that were built in the 16th Century to house the 24 castle marksmen and their families who guarded the fortress. The population of medieval Czech must have been comprised of short people as we had to duck through the doors. Franz Kafka, Prague’s native son, had his workspace at 22 Golden Lane. I had Nam like flashbacks to reading Metamorphosis in AP English. To this day, I still don’t see the big deal about an angst ridden teenager who goes into his room, refuses to come out, and slowly turns into a cockroach.

From there we tried to go the Toy and Barbie Museum, but it was closed due to technical reasons much to our disappointment. We decided lunch was in order and headed to Café Louvre, a Prague institution where Kafka and Einstein used to “kick it,” along with other members of the local intelligentsia. I ordered the most delicious split pea soup I’ve ever had. The manner in which it was served had pizzazz. The chef came out and gave me a bowl filled with what looked like a scoop of mashed potatoes with pieces of ham and croutons. He then proceeded to pour the pea soup around the potatoes and then garnished it with mint. I am not sure how you say delicious in Czech, but I said “OMG” in English. We also had our first serving of mulled hot wine.

The wine warmed us up and it was perfect for a cold day. It was here that we developed rule #4, which is “Don’t order more than one mulled wine unless you plan on getting bombed.” It was a bit cold that day and I could have definitely stayed and gotten bombed if it were not for the fact that we had limited sleep the night before and tickets to the opera.

However, the mulled wine made us warm and toasty and temporarily immune from the elements so we headed back to the hotel for a quick wardrobe change and then we were off to Don Giovanni at the Estates Theater, the very theater where Mozart debuted Donny G. We loved rocking it W.A. Mozart/Donny G style in such a visually beautiful place. Cue the Falco Rock Me Amadeus music.

We capped off our day of culture with dinner at the Buddha Bar of the NY/Paris chain. The Prague version was a cross between Buddakhan and Tao. The food was comme ci comme ça and overpriced. The beef I had tasted like $3 Chinatown beef and did not merit the $25 price tag. However, the drinks more than made up for the food. If you go there, go there for drinks, skip the dinner. And say “ahoy” to the giant Buddha in the main dining room for me, would you? I don’t think the “ahoy” for “hi” will ever get old to me.

We arrived in Prague at 7 a.m. from Krakow on the night train. The night train was an experience that I will not soon forget. I wanted to take it because I think that there’s something romantic about traveling by train, maybe it is because I am a throw back from another era and I was looking for Cary Grant on the Orient Express. The Orient Express it was not! Although I didn’t think it was that bad, Ahab, the nickname I’ve bestowed upon my travel mate for her map skills, described it as “super creepy.” In fairness she was also afraid we would get gassed and robbed on the overnight train as she had read one too many travel warnings that had morphed into the realms of urban legends. Perhaps, it wasn’t that bad for me because I drugged myself up with a Nyquil and melatonin cocktail so I was too tired to care. However, it didn’t help allay Ahab’s fears when our hot little porter told us to lock our doors because “there are thieves.” So, we triple locked our private sleeper compartment and debated on whether we should even venture out to the WC should the need arise, lest we get clobbered by some thief in the night.

Speaking of our sleeper car, when we first entered the beds were turned down, however, we weren’t ready to retire yet so we had hot porter put the go-go gadget seats up into the “lounge” position, which he happily did and then left.

About ninety minutes later, the sleepy time drugs were kicking in and we wanted to go to sleep so we tried to convert our seats into beds. However, not possessing Inspector Gadget like skills, we were unsuccessful. We didn’t see the clearly marked signs that alerted passengers that it was verboten to transform the seats into beds and vice versa while the train was in motion until it was too late. Wunderbar! There was an “emergency” bat mobile phone to dial our porter. To me it was the equivalent of the hotline between Kremlin to Washington. To Polrail it was the equivalent of the fake Fisher Price phone that sat on my first grade teacher’s desk which she claimed was her direct line that she would use to narc on us to God in the event we were bad. Needless to say our phone didn’t work and the porter didn’t come running when we called him. It took him 40 minutes to magically appear. I tried to search for him on our car and tried to get into another car to find him, but it was impossible to pass thru the cars as there was no platform floor in between cars. This was both comforting as no one could get into the car who shouldn’t be in it, but also disturbing because we couldn’t get out. Hey, I’ve seen Polar Express. I know that a train can threaten to be derailed when certain cars get separated from other cars.

Perhaps the most fun was when somewhere in the middle of the night and in the middle of who knows where Eastern Europe our train stopped for an hour or so due to an engine problem. We didn’t have heat, electric, or water. It was freezing! Ahab was afraid they would kick us off the train, but I just took more melatonin to go back to sleep. At that point I needed the drugs more than ever because with the lack of the engine to power the heating system and the soothing sounds of the train traveling on the tracks, I had a hard time drowning out the sound of the passenger snoring in the compartment next to us.

I think, I can, I think, I can….choo…choo. Thomas the train finally pulled into the main train station in Praha shortly before 7 a.m. We stepped out of the train station on our very short walk to our hotel and our first smell of Prague consisted of some guy smoking pot. Pot at 7 a.m on a Monday morning? Is that the Czech version of the breakfast of champions?

We only had to go about 600 meters to find our charming hotel, the Hotel Chopin. I highly recommend the Hotel Chopin. The staff was friendly, the rooms were clean with modern décor, and it was centrally located. I wouldn’t hesitate to stay there again should I one day find myself in Praha!