Narrow st, cobble stones everywhere, beautiful facade, it has the special feeling of old medieval town in Europe. Great architecture, gothic and baroque style, stunning cathedral with beautiful fresco and stain glass. And the beautiful prague castle, with the light reflecting from the river at night time, and the famous charles bridge, along with 20 statues of various Saints etc. Of course, the food and famous czech beer : pilsner and starapramen, and they are good and so cheap. Everyone drinks beer there. My favorite beer is Kozel, a dark beer with a slightly sweet taste. Oh, there are so many great views from different towers and cathedrals there. The view is awesome. And I love to walk, wandering around the old town and narrow streets. Stunning Prague. It is so beautiful. In fact, it is the most beautiful city in my list now, ahead of Paris and Stockholm.

  And the Europeans are so cool, i met so many diff tourists - Russian, French, Italian, English, German, Austrian, Polish, i even met someone from Luxemburg, and of course, local Czech. We would at times hang out, drink, had dinner together, went to cafe, going around taking pictures and sharing ideas, sightseeing, and attending the concert at the theatre etc. Everyone I met is so relax, cool, fun and had a good time.

After our splendid camping tour, Tom was ready to experience the luxuries of indoors! We have rented an apartment for 1 week in the city! As it turned out the apartment was enormous and lovely!  

First day of our trip, first place we visited. Ofcourse we need to send postcards!
We browsed through a lot of lovely postcards, and finally made our choice. We bought stamps as well, the only thing we needed to do was write the address on it, and put them in a mailbox. Piece of cake.

Ok, we wrote the names and adresses on it, then got hungry and went for some dinner.
When we got back in the pension we realized we did not post the cards. Well, no big deal, we will do that tomorrow on the railwaystation.

We arrived in time on the station, bought the bottles of water and some softdrink. And my sister went looking of a mailbox. Piece of cake? Not really, she asked someone, who told her to go outside the station, turn left (or right... darn, why don't we speak Czech?), but with pointing hands she understood where to go. Did she?
Not really, she returned to where we were waiting, still having those postcards.

Ah... don't worry. We buy another stamp in Slowakia, put it on top of the Czech one, and will mail them from Slowakia.

- Location: Near of the center, 10 min. walking to the malastrana square. - Room: Normal size with a comfortable bed, and a normal bathroom. - Breakfast: Very good, a lot of things to choose. - Atention: Normal, depends of the person who were in reception, but normally good.

Pension Platan has about 8 rooms, situated on the 5th floor of a Prague apartment building, not far from the Old Town. Staro Meste (The Old Town square) is at 6-7 minutes walking distance from the pension. Streettrain 8 stops almost in front of the pension, and at Namestie Repúbliky (350 metres) there is a station of the underground (Line B - yellow). The pension does not glow with luxuary, but it is very comfortable. The 5th floor can be reached by stairs, or by an old fashioned but yet functionable elevator, which the kids loved! Nice beds, clean rooms, clean bathroom, soft towels, bedsheets of cotton :), there was a TV set, a hairdryer in the bathroom, no airconditiong but we had a big fan, and on the hallway there was a big refridgerator in which each room had their own shelf. Breakfast was simple: yoghurt, bread, butter, jam and honey, and tea or coffee, brought into your room on a tray. We were with 4 people, 2 adults and 2 children, the children could stay for free on the parents room. There is no reception, but we had an early arrival and the lady in charge was around. She will be until 1 or 2 PM. I don't know what it will be like when you have a late arrival, in that case you may have got a telephonenumber or an address where you can get your keys I assume. As long as the lady is around you can use wireless internet on her laptop if u need to check something. With your roomkeys you get a key of the frontdoor of the apartment building as well, so it was like we had our own house in town :)

Before the last time I went to Prague, a buddy of mine suggested getting an apartment instead of a hotel room. He had heard about them through friends and supplied me with the link. Prague city apartments have everything from studios to three bedroom suites ranging from 62 Euros to 276 Euros. And they are located all over the tourist areas of Prague! The price for three nights was excellent. We received a huge discount for the third night! When I went, my buddy Rey and I chose the Residence Cerna, located in the Nove Mesto area. We paid a deposit ahead of time and the rest upon check in. Upon arriving we took a cab to the in-town office and received our keys and directions (we were only a couple blocks away and needed to stretch our legs!). So you know, they also have an office at the airport in Prague. We each got our seperate place and loved the feeling of it. It was like actually living there! Now, who wouldn't like that? My apartment had a kitchenette and a stack laundry in the bathroom. An elevator made things easier after a long day of walking about. We were steps from the New Town Hall and National Theatre. The rooms were clean and had modern looking furniture. The kitchenette had everything you needed: plates, glasses, utensels and a coffee pot. I didn't need the laundry, but it was nice knowing it was there. Overall it was quiet, comfortable, clean and most of all affordable in my mind. I'll use this service again next time I'm in Prague!

Hotel King George have an excellent location in the old town of Prague. I could never asked for better one. The room was a little bit spooky because it had an upstair bed... who would sleep there? we asked ourselves... but the answer came immediately: one ghost :)) Pretty clean, enough breakfast and let's say good night sleep. I would highly recommend it because of its location.

For many of you out there, the idea of flying to another continent for a long weekend might sound a little nuts. But when you're in the "business" (airline business) you get a lot of opportunities. My buddy Rey and I decided to take advantage of our perks and headed to Prague from Austin, Texas via Dallas and Frankfurt. We got there late due to bad weather in Germany, but made the most of it. Getting our apartments was a breeze and we settled in for a good nights rest after traveling all day. Being  it was February, we got lucky for the most part with the local weather. The morning brought a gorgeous but crisp day and allowed for most of our photo opportunities. As you can see from the photos, the sky was amazingly blue! We played tourist most the day. Taking in the sites and even some music at the Church of St. Salvator (highly recommended!). This trip has just to relax, no agenda. We went to a couple clubs in the evening and found plenty of places to find a whiskey or two to keep us warm! The next couple days were overcast but we still got out and tried to see how the Czech half lived. All and all it was a great trip and finding our apartments to our liking was really something to come back for.

Oh man, Prague is a phenominal place.  I will get on this as soon as I can.  As a preview, Greg and I wandered into a wine tasting with a traditional Czech 4 piece band playing then fell under the spell of the gypsies and ended up in a gothic/medievil restaurant full of human skulls and fire twirlers then ended up at a local bar where 3 beers and 3 Jamison's ended up costing us 11 dollars American.  Oh yeah and we have a standing invite to stay with our new friend Deniz in Istanbul, Turkey...

Saturday was just one of those perfect days that you can never imagine happening and still can't believe it even after you experience it.  I'll get into details soon but right now I need some rest.  Plenty of photos to follow (and hopefully some really cool videos).

-Jon  

And again we woke up, this time when we just left Dresden Hbf. This is a beautiful town, and we could see some of it at the banks of the river which we had on our left side, going south to Prague.

We crossed the Czech border at Decin, and saw some most remarkable person, in my imagination such a man should be at the Russian plains - but he was the Czech conductor entering our train and a few minutes later he checked our tickets - and now known to my sister and me as "de Sik".

Another guy with a Czech conductor uniform was very friendly and told us we were close to Prague Holesovice, the station where we would arrive, and he was right, it took a short time before we were at our first destination!

Day started great with sunshine and a lovely temperature.
We found a ramp so we could roll our suitcases down to the central hall of the station, where we bought a 24-hour public transport ticket and went further down to the subway system. Looooong, fast moving escalators giving me and my kid the creeps, I could not step on it with the heavy suitcase, so my sister who has some more courage took the escalators twice to help me with the heavy stuff. We decided to take a taxi the next time we need to travel with our luggage in town.
After all, we survived the underground trains (not bad) and escalators (eeks! no elevators...), and arrived at our pension. The pension Platan is at Revolucni, in an old Prague building, at the 5th floor, which could be reached with common stairs or with an old fashioned elevator, which the kids loved!

Our room was not yet ready, which was no surprise for us, because we arrived very early. We could leave our luggage in the pension, and went out for a bit of breakfast, which we found at a garden terrace: Coffee, and pancakes with fresh fruit - delicious! (Kom daar maar eens om in Amsterdam, no way dus).
Feeling better after this breakfast we returned to the pension, to find our luggage was already in our room :)
We rested a bit, and then went on to the Old Town square, kids were a bit tired after that exciting night on the train, so they were n't to eager to do the sight seeing, thus we stopped at a restaurant at the square. We are used to the Euro price level (are we?), so this Czech Koruna was like heaven to us. And the food is really good, tastes like home-made instead of canned stuff.

We went to the Astronomical Clock, saw lots of beautiful buildings and houses, and we entered a shop for the famous crystal and glass ware. And ofcourse we walked the Charles Bridge across the river Moldau (or in Czech: Vltava) to the Mala Strana. The kids were tired (they went to sleep way too late because of the excitement) so at the Mala Strana we hopped on a street train, to do some easy sight seeing.

The next morning we had a nice breakfast at the pension, went to a shop of the Paneria chain which was just across the street to buy some lunch, called for a taxi to the Hlavni Nadrazi (Main Station), bought some water and cola for the trip for there was no restaurant car on our train and went on to Banska Bystrica in Slowakia.

Stayed here back in August 2005 with a friend of mine. She had found this hostel online, and also booked the room for us. The only thing I said was necesary for me, was that we had our own bathroom. :D We got a room on the top floor and had a great view. It was an ok room for a couple of nights, but I have to say this, the beds felt like laying on concrete. Damn, they were so hard my hips started to hurt when I laid on my side.. Oh well, I survived.. lmao This hostel is located close to the city center and the Old Town Square. We walked there in no time. Well, we would have if my feet hadn't been killing me. hahaha... The place is cheap, clean and the staff is very helpful and friendly. Had it not been for the beds, I might actually go back here.

Welcome to the imaginary culinary world of one out of those TravBuddies whose passion for food makes a great part of living and travelling, of one of those who not only enjoy consuming but also creating. All you see here and maybe crave for is for free. If you ever make your way to Prague and feel that your sugar level has dropped to its very low, that you are starving and don't have money to burn, do not hesitate to stop by :) If you're lucky enough and the owner is not gone discovering new wonders of the blue planet, you may be let in and find what your stomach is hungry for. Eat till you drop :) Enjoy.

My group were extremely pleased with the service we received from Prague Discount Hotels. The taxi service was fantastic, we thought that the Ibis hotel was perfect as far as location went and the service they gave us was good too. The price paid was better than if I had booked direct with the hotel, and altogether I am more than pleased that I booked through Prague Discount Hotels. Prague is beautiful but much more expensive than we thought it would be. We all had a very good time there and hope to return again. Obviously Prague Discount Hotels would be the website that I would use without question.

There is so much to see and do in this wonderful city. Turn any corner and you will find great architecture, culture, interesting local crafts and of course the best beer in the world!!

I am staying t the Four Seasons Hotel in Prague (THE BEST) No other hotel in Prague has the location or the amazing staff that this does. Directly located on the river the views are breath taking. Big news!!!! The restaurant in the hotel has just been awarded a michelin star!! The first in Prague and the Czech Republic.

Take a walk across the Charles Bridge and just continue along and up and up and up until you reach the Prage Castle. The journey is as interesting as the destination. Stop off half way up for some Czech beer at one of many bars/restaurants and this will assist you on reaching the top. Don't forget your camera as the views across the city from the top are amazing!!

You have to buy some Czech glass ... it is beautiful. There is a great shop called 'Blue' .... they also have one at the airport so if you forget or only want to carry as hand luggage you can pick something up there .... fantastic value - especially the Champagne glasses!!

While staying in Prague we stayed at Golden Tulip Diplomat Hotel which is a 4 star hotel located in a very calm, but a bit boring residence part of Prague City centre. The hotel is well situated if you are visiting Prague Castle, which is within walking distance from the hotel. Otherwise the airport is easily reachable from here. If you are going home late in the night or in the evening, this is a hotel that can cost you massive in taxi fares by many of the more crooked taxi operators that drives around in this city. The Diplomat Hotel is a fairly large hotel with 398 Standard/Superior rooms and Suites. The rooms were very nice and comfortable and I even enjoyed the bed. One thing that needs to be stated about this hotel is that they have a fantastic breakfast. Here is almost everything that you can imagine. The breakfast opens a 6.30 am and is open to at least 10 am. I am sure that if you really hit the tables you don’t need to eat more that day.