Ferragosto Vacation to Prague

Last week we visited the most beautiful city in Europe, Prague. Yes, I know that's a big call, but in my opinion there is no nicer city that I've seen. And I could only say that statement after I swallowed my pride and sang ten rounds of the Polish national anthem as penance. Then I sang 'Advance Australia Fair' and after that I was confused about my nationality and exhausted so I had to drink a small-ish glass of Czech beer that was bigger than the size of my head.



Apart from the gorgeous architecture, the best thing about Prague was undoubtedly the food. Oh, the food. The fatty, hearty, homemade food with not a hint of fresh vegetable on the side. Here is one of their traditional dishes, the pork piglet with saurkraut and Czech dumplings. Try eating that with apple strudel for dessert four nights in a row...I did and let me tell you I didn't feel good on the fourth night.



Ok, if you are not that excited about food that will potentially knock ten years of the life span of your heart, Prague also has some amazing statues with some especially beautiful ones on the famous Charles Bridge.



The Charles Bridge also had some buskers. This was one of the weirder ones we saw...look closely as to what is on the poor dog who looks like he'd rather be anywhere else and is clearly not impressed.



We stayed at the Crowne Plaza Prague Castle hotel and on the last morning we decided to have a mocktail before we were due to go to the airport. I said MOCKTAIL not cocktail - it was only ten am after all!

The strangest thing happened. We could see outside our hotel on the street there was a film shoot of some kind going on. Cars were screeching around a corner and there were actors yelling whilst acting out a scene. We sat down with our mocktails at the hotel outside tables to relax and see what was going on. We later found out it was a Russian James Bond type of movie, according to the hotel.

Ok, that's strange but not as strange as what happened next. The action moved from the side of the hotel and moved right next to us. The table to our left that was about five centimetres from ours was empty and all of a sudden ten girls run up and start setting it up with props, actors and voila, filming has begun.

I looked over at husband and said 'we are clearly going to appear in these scenes' to which I hear the bellowing Russian director yell out 'tell the actor to stop looking up and talking' to which the Czech director yelled out just as aggressively 'she's not an actor, she is staying here so I can't ask her to do anything'. Polish, Russian and Czech are very similar so I could understand it all and decided to keep my head down.

Then all of a sudden I felt uncomfortable and said to husband 'I'm going inside'. We both got up and the director came over and said in English 'please just stay for a few more minutes until we get the take'. What the? I looked around and realised there was a few put-out looking extra's that clearly would have liked to be in the scene. It was very random and if anyone watches a Russian James Bond film where the actor yells out in a thick Russian accent 'Hurry up, there's no time to eat (actor grabs other actor's massive mug of beer and slams it on the table). The Russians are coming!', then look for us and we are the people looking very confused next to them. They did about ten takes of this one line and so the same line was running through my head all day. When we were having lunch at the airport, I annoyed husband by saying ' Hurry up, there's no time to eat, the Russians are coming!' Ok, so it was like the tenth I had said it in the last hour, but I don't know why he got annoyed.

Russian directors yelling at us aside, we had the most wonderful holiday in Prague. I recommend everyone to go to this beautiful city. Try the Czech beer, make an opinion whether the Czech women deserve the title of being the most beautiful in the world (debatable!) and visit the Communism museum to see how much this country has gone through. I know I sound like a tourist book, but honestly WE LOVE PRAGUE! Next stop in our series of mini-breaks is Switzerland so we'll see if one bite of real Swiss chocolate will change my mind as to which is the best city in Europe. Yep that's all it takes to change my mind, one block of good chocolate.