The first thing that comes to mind when you step foot in Prague is ‘Wow this city is beautiful!’ But once you get over the beauty of the architecture you realise that you should probably find your place of accommodation. This proves difficult because Prague is made up of circular streets. Applying logic to getting around the city is almost impossible. The best way is probably to wander around the city and take mental photographs of what each street looks like, then follow that.
After you’ve found where you’ll be staying you’ll want to find food. That’s easy. It can be found in almost every city center restaurant, presented on a laminated menu filled with huge pictures of the food and translations for almost every language. But look past that and you’ll find some perfectly cooked beef, amazing gravy and the best dumplings you’ll ever eat. With most cities you’d have to walk out of the centre a little to find a nice meal – usually at a lower price – but Prague has it all in the city centre. Most of the food is traditional Czech cooking with lots of beef and great fresh bread. I couldn’t complain but you’ll be hard pressed to find much variation if you happen to be vegetarian, vegan or a beef-hater.
Whether you managed to find a good meal or not, you can drink on a full stomach or feed your hunger with some fantastic beer. It comes mostly in light varieties and can be found everywhere, including small convenience shops, and it is far superior to Tennants. If you look a little further than the obvious places you’ll find small pubs that serve a wider [colour] range of beers. Although a very touristy thing to do (and something I’d usually avoid) go on a walking tour, and there is nothing better than one that involves beer as well as history. The Beer Tour is possibly one of the most informative and tasty tours I’ve been on. You explore a few places in the city centre and get a wee half pint of the best beer in each place while they tell you how it’s brewed and what’s special about it. The tour lasts for about 2 pints, then the instructor leaves you with a paper certificate telling you you’re a beer expert now, and a beer map. The beer map contains about 25 of the best pubs all around Prague so you can continue to get pished or save it for a later date.
One of the best highlights of Prague and something not to be missed is the Beer Museum. Thankfully you are allowed to drink the exhibitions in this museum. In fact you’ll have trouble trying to decide what to drink because the place has 30 different beers on tap, nevermind them changing every week. If you really can’t choose what to have they offer taster glasses, all about a quarter of a pint. All the beer here is from small microbreweries, so you get to try the niche beers of Prague as well as the big names served in the city.
Once you’ve had enough to drink and never want to see beer again you can have a wander around Pragues museums and galleries. One of the highlights was a Dali and Mucha exhibition right in the center. It is a lot larger than you think at first so it’s worth taking out a good hour to look through it. The Dali floor has some of his lesser known work as well as the popular stuff; it makes for an interesting contrast. The Mucha exhibition ranges from pencil drawings to large posters. The transition between the intricate pencil drawings and the huge graphic posters with bold lines is fantastic. If just looking at things does not satisfy you then the Chocolate Museum is worth a visit. Although by itself relatively boring – but informative – you do get to see how chocolates are made. You even get a small taster at the end. The best part is the gift shop of course! Apart from containing pretty tasty chocolate you can mix the two best things from the trip: chocolate and beer, and buy chocolate in the shape of a beer bottle.
So visiting Prague in 48 hours, you can easily have enough time to stare at the architecture, go see some great art and then spend the rest of your time eating and drinking as many of the 30+ varieties of beer as you can muster.
