Blog: Choral & Current

First Day in Prague

Hi all!

Well, we all made it to Prague okay, even after a 9-hour flight, then 7 hours sitting around Heathrow followed by an hour and a half delay on our flight from London to Prague.  We checked in to our hotel (the Best Western Majestic Plaza in the heart of Prague, which is really really nice, btw) at midnight.  Some went right to bed after a shower while a few of the younger, wilder souls had to track down the nearest bar :)  This is one of the most beautiful, spectacular cities I've ever been in, even with tons of tourists.  I thought a lot of the advertising bumpf was just that, but really, it's all true.  Every single building for miles and miles downtown is a work of art and everyone of them unique and intriguing.  There are little touches everywhere on the buildings and in the streets of the artistic whimsy which this city seems to have generated for generations.  Almost no streets are perpendicular to another and every time you turn a corner, no matter in how obscure a part of the old town, you come across a new surprise.  I say old town, but even the "new town" is over 500 years old.  It's all relative.

I went out to take pictures in the morning and got just a little overwhelmed and giddy with the beauty of it all.  The more I looked, the more I found.  And that's just part of the charm of Prague.  There is always something delightful to the eye just around the corner.  After more wandering around with Les in the afternoon, we went to an early dinner.  It was hot as blazes out (probably 30c but we Vancouverites are just not used to that) and we'd been getting more and more desperate to find a restaurant with a/c until we stumbled on this one place with authentic Czech cuisine and of course, beer.  This country is literally soaked in beer.  They consume and produce more per capita than anywhere else in the world.  So what did I order?  A local delicacy, knee of pork!  Basically 1 full kilo of meat and bone (yup the whole thing) roasted on a spit and brought that way to you to carve up at your table with some mustard and horse-radish.  There isn't really room for anything else.  It was very succulent and tender.

After a very refreshing cold bath and shower back at the hotel to cool off, Greg Martin, Rod Locke, Ryan Cho and I joined up to take in the Euro-Cup 2008 final between Germany and Spain at a local Czech pub.  Viva Espana!  Now it's time for me to finally get the right amount of sleep at the right time of day :)  Tomorrow we spend the morning in Prague and then we're off to Hradec Kralove for the choral festival.  Now we get down to business :)

Cheers,

Mark MacDonald

Posted by Mark MacDonald on June 29, 2008 at 1:43 PM
Filed in: tour diaries | Permanent Link