What is the ultimate luxury in a cramped, big city? Emptiness, a big room with no more stuff to fill. Early morning, on Beach of La Concha of San Sebestian, a place normally filled with beach goer, this moment, it's empty. A single man enjoy full solitude at the beach,with the only disturbance of his own stroke.
Listed as one of the most charming town in east Europe and one of the UNESCO site. Our experience with this little town is romantic yet a bit nostalgic.
The setting of the town is interesting, a river - the Vltava make a dramatic twist which forms two peninsulae, each situated with a dominant building in town- the church and the castle.
We took an evening bus from Prague and arrived late. It was a time accessing data service isn't cheap, so dropping us off of a highway at 9pm without google map and two oversize suitcase does make you feel a bit adventurous and nervous.
Judging from ambient lighting source and a diagrammatic map at the bus station- I figured the entrance to the town is probably right across the highway. However, this is not the tourist town I pictured in mind, and we did not encounter any single person before arriving the hotel. And here comes the 2nd problem, the b&b we reserved --- it was closed.
The area is only lighted with fainting yellowish street light. Pretty much all the hostel in the area had shut their door at this point, with just a bit of faith left, we rang the door bell twice. After a long pause, a woman came out, who later prove to be the mother of our host, greeted us with hand gesture accompany her soft voice(she didn't speak English) and eventually get us to the room. After discussed our breakfast hour and other house policy stuff, she left us alone.
Now, dinner time - our night eventually turn totally amazing 30 min later, but we were simply hoping able to get bar food at that moment.
We take a quick stroll around the town, did encounter some tourist snapping night shot and one pub with a bar inside (perhaps that's our best shot, I was thinking) --- finally we stopped foot in front of a restaurant we had researched, a tavern, and it was open. At the moment, we step in the restaurant, something magical happened --- there is an open grille right at the reception area fill the place with wood flavored warm air, the atmosphere is cozy and relaxing. We observed a bit and found ourselves a lovely setup in the lower section. With a starving stomach and an open mind, we ordered quite a solid feast for ourselves --- more than enough we end of finishing everything off the doggy bag in the next couple days, well -- that's another long story to crave in if you like.
We took a stroll after the dinner, the night light highlighted areas around the castle. Standing at the foot of castle hill, you can observe the textural graphic and admire details of the illustrious result under the reign of Rosenburg family. Unfortunately, we did not encounter the white lady as the local tale, which I'm pretty sure she can provide stories in great details.
Municipal House is at our hotel proximity so we dived right in after dropping the luggage. This is a cloudy drizzling day, fit perfectly to visit any interior space; a small tip - my rule of thumb is always flexible on the sequencing of your list of attractions so they can be rearranged based on your real-time situation. The city hall featured Mucha's art nouveau mural throughout, looking at them as mural stirs a very different feeling from the 2d graphic. It's very engaging, the expression coming out of the body language and the starring eye of the illustration speaks to me directly, intimate and forced.
Entrance of municipal hall
Within 5 minutes walk is the old town plaza, which includes the astronomy clock, old town hall and couple historic building, passing through the square, we stopped by the oldest Jewish joint -
Josefov, or the Jewish quarter; an area in between the old town and Vltava river, understand as an old neighborhood surrounded by a wall - ghetto, which the Jews were limited to live in this area. However, you won't feel the narrow street these days as all of the building but couple historic building were torn down in early 20 century to clear out the slum. We wondered around it and tried to avoid the crowd which take us to the riverfront, overlooking the castle up above the hill.
The sun sets early in the fall, the overcast cloud restored every pigment to its natural state; layered red tile, chrome leaves and blue river in order and ready for the night.
Prague Castle From River Vltava
In 2011, I was planning a 10 days trip to visit Eastern/ middle Europe. This all initiated by two little instances in my daily life, a recommendation from a colleague to check out a UNESCO town in Czech and a growing popular scene set ink-pop drama. 'Český Krumlov' and 'Hallstatt'. The rest of the trip kind of built around figuring how and where to go around these two charming towns, it's also adding additional challenge if you don't want to do the round trip flight (because I really hate losing a day just to catch the return flight) with a tight budget. After evaluating couple scenarios, we set the itinerary. Our first stop? The city of hundred spires - Prague.
Prague Castle from across Vltava River
To be fair, Prague isn't some place you visit just to kill the time in between, and I don't mean to make it sounds not important. This is a charming city has a lot to explore - part of mid-century super power Habsburg family, King of Bohemian- the reign of the region and left a legacy of oldest castle complex of the world. Plus, one of my favorite artist - Alphonse Mucha, devoted last 20 years of his life on artwork admired by his nation. And those towers, yes, if you have endless energy don't mind climbing up and down - this can also be your parkour playground.
Mucha's Mural
We took a usual red eye flight straight to Prague from New York. From the airport, you need a train to connect the closest metro stop, which you need to time quite precisely cause the bus doesn't come that frequent. We had endless debate whether to take a bus or a taxi in exchange for time. Short answer to this, if you aren't traveling alone, any option don't initiate a fight is a good answer, you truly don't want this to spoil your mood on the first day of the journey.
