Weekend in Prague!

On Thursday we headed up to Prague for a little weekend getaway. I really love the fact that we can hop on a train and, in a mere four hours, wind up in Prague. We hadn't been there since December in 2010, so we thought it would be good to get out of Bratislava for a few days. And I will always happily go to Prague, so it's not like I needed any convincing.

See photos here!

Prague is such a stunningly beautiful city. I'm in a constant state of awe when tromping through its winding streets. Its spire-spiked skyline is so... inspiring. Yes, I've met a few well-traveled snobs who think Prague has been tainted by tourism and its resultant garish tchotchke industry. But people who say that must never venture much beyond Karlova street and Havelska market. The city is an architecture geek's paradise. It's also got a bustling and energetic pulse, and for us it offers more of a cosmopolitan experience than Bratislava. And lucky for us, the city was relatively empty this weekend. It was also nice to see the old town square free of all the Christmas market crap that cluttered things up last time when we were there in December.

Obviously, a couple of days is not enough for Prague, but I'll take what I can get. A full week would be ideal, though. At any rate, we managed to see some things that we didn't see last time, like the Museum of Czech Cubism. I really dug this because not only did I get to see examples of Cubist furniture, but I was introduced to some really nice works by a slew of artists I'd never heard of before, like Josef Capek and Emil Filla.

Aside from family and friends, the thing I miss the most from the US is Thai food. We've both been craving it like crack. Prague has several Thai restaurants, and we tried two of the more centrally located ones, both of which received lots of positive reviews. Unfortunately, one of them was almost offensively bad despite an uber-stylish interior, while the other was adequate, but nothing we'd come clamoring back for. And I'm sure you're thinking, "Why would you try Thai food in Prague?" The answer, of course, is that living in Slovakia, we can get Czech and Slovak food (the two are extremely similar) any time. Plus, most younger generations in Prague are more likely to eat food at the myriad ethnic restaurants there than traditional Czech eateries. I'm convinced we'll find good Thai food *somewhere* in Europe - I just hope we don't have to go to London to find it.

At any rate, I hope to have more of these occasional weekend getaways to impossibly cool European cities that are easily reachable by train.