Czech Us Out: Three Days in Prague and One Unforgettable Chandelier
Czech Republic | Prague + Kutna Hora | March 2009
We had a 7:20am flight from Paris to Prague, meaning our taxi was at 5:30am, meaning we were running on not enough sleep and a lot of enthusiasm. An hour and a half later we were in the Czech Republic and the city from the window of the cab to the hotel was not giving me the feeling I was hoping for. A little gray. A little rough around the edges. Not what the pictures had suggested.
Then we found the old town. The love began immediately and did not stop.
Prague is beautiful in a way that is genuinely different from other European cities we've visited. The architecture is its own thing, older and more ornate in places, the streets more labyrinthine, the overall atmosphere more quietly dramatic. Once you are in it rather than around it the city opens completely.
We were hungry and disoriented by a new language that shares essentially zero words with anything English, a new currency, a new city. We found a traditional Czech restaurant and ate pretzels, sausages grilled until they split, mustard, sauerkraut, goulash, and hot mulled wine. I am a person who loves all of these things and the combination of all of them at once, in a wood-paneled restaurant in Prague, on a cold windy afternoon, was as good as you'd imagine.
Dinner our first night was at Z'Vatisi restaurant, which I had researched and reserved, and which I will put in our top three meals of all time with no hesitation. The restaurant allowed you to build your own tasting menu, mixing and matching any number of courses from the full menu, and we went deep into it. I had a pan-seared pepper-crusted beef carpaccio to start, then a porcini mushroom risotto with truffle oil, then a Bohemian sampler: crispy duck with red cabbage and herb dumpling, roast rabbit with slow-roasted pork belly, beef tornado with vegetable sauce and cranberries. Matt started with a pumpkin-pear soup with cinnamon cream, then sea bass with citrus rosemary sauce, then lamb chops crusted with violet mustard and lavender gremolata. We shared the best apple strudel with creme anglaise for dessert. Every plate was beautifully presented. The atmosphere was elegant and the service impeccable. We walked out into the Prague night feeling like the trip had already been worth it and we'd only been there six hours.
Day two started with St. Nicholas Church and Prague Castle, which involves a sustained uphill climb that your legs will register for the next twenty-four hours. The castle complex is vast: huge plaza, multiple churches, great views of the city below. We then walked a mile to a monastery famous for its library, which genuinely deserved the fame. Barrel-vaulted ceilings, floor-to-ceiling shelves, the smell of very old books. Lunch there was soup in a bread bowl: I had cabbage soup (sweeter and milder than sauerkraut), Matt had goulash. Both good. The only downside was the restaurant playing 1990s English-language pop hits at volume. Sting in a monastery in Prague while eating my sauerkraut soup is not the specific atmosphere I was hoping for.
The evening was one of those evenings you try to burn into permanent memory while it's happening. We wandered back to the old square and found a cafe with outdoor seating and heaters. Mulled wine, cappuccinos, dessert, the cold night air, the old square lit up around us. Matt had been shooting night photos from Charles Bridge. Breathtaking views. Very cold. We needed the mulled wine.
I remember writing in my notes that night: I don't know if life will bring us back to Prague, and I don't want to forget this evening. I still don't want to forget it.
Our last day we took a tour to Kutna Hora, about seventy miles outside Prague. It's one of the oldest towns in Bohemia, once a major silver mining center with a population larger than Prague's. Now a small city of about twenty thousand. The reason most people go is the Ossuary.
Kutna Hora lost thousands of people to the Black Plague and the cemetery ran out of room. They excavated forty thousand graves and eventually invited an artist to do something with the bones, which were just piled inside a church. What he created is exactly as extraordinary as it sounds. The chandelier alone is made from every bone in the human body. The entire space is decorated with human remains in patterns and arrangements that are, depending on your constitution, either deeply unsettling or deeply beautiful. We found it remarkable and unique and absolutely worth the trip.
After the Ossuary we walked the town of Kutna Hora, which is genuinely lovely: cobblestone streets, great small buildings, a cathedral with a unique three-peaked roof that is one of its kind. Lunch at a local restaurant produced our second-favorite meal of the trip. They brew their own dark beer on site. Our tour guide recommended it specifically, telling us it was not like Guinness but dark like caramel and, with a meaningful pause, "very popular with the ladies." I ordered it immediately. It was delicious. I have thought about it since.
Most of lunch was spent talking with a family from Liverpool: father originally from Ireland (I caught about 60% of what he said, because English only gets you so far in certain Irish accents), mother, and a daughter who clarified things for us when needed. The father works with someone from New Jersey and did a genuinely impressive impression of the accent. He dreams of visiting the Black Hills of South Dakota, which is the most surprising American travel aspiration we've ever encountered. He also referred to police stations as "sheriff stations" because he watches too many Westerns, which his daughter confirmed immediately with an eyeroll.
The Mozart evening did not land. We had tickets to Don Giovanni “Opera” at the Estate Theatre where Mozart himself had debuted the opera in 1787. This sounded wonderful. Two singers in period costumes that had seen better days performed for an hour. Halfway through I looked at Matt and he was asleep. I then noticed that approximately three-quarters of the audience was also asleep. I whispered this to Matt. He woke up and was overtaken by the specific type of giggles that are impossible to stop in a quiet room. You try to hold them in and they get worse and the snorts begin and then the person next to you starts too. The opera lasted one hour and felt appropriately long.
A few Prague observations worth preserving: the metro escalators descend at a forty-five degree angle for what feels like the length of a city block at a speed that makes you genuinely question whether you will make it to the bottom. There were at least four moments I thought I was going to fall into the void. The beggars on Charles Bridge kneel face-down on the cobblestone in what feels like a complete surrender or submission, holding out their hands. You can't see their faces. We gave money every time. It felt inadequate every time. And the cobblestones of Prague are spectacular and absolutely merciless on anyone wearing anything with a heel. European women navigate this in heels with what looks like zero effort. I do not know how they do it.
Prague was a complete and wonderful surprise of a city. We're glad we went. We'll be back…