Exploration

Spending eight days in Prague meant that we had a fair amount of time to explore the city.  As it was, there were still more we could have done.  I never quite was able to talk Sean into going paddle boating in the river, for instance.  The holy grail for any traveler is finding places where you are the only tourist in the room, without feeling like you are invading the local people’s secret place.  Of course, being that you are a tourist yourself, you never can quite achieve this all of the time.  Not that you necessarily would want to – there is a reason why there are hundreds of people walking across the Charles Bridge or touring Prague’s two castles.  (Which, by the way, are more fortifications rather than castles.  I have yet to fulfill seeing the Disney-like image of a castle I have in my head in real life).  But sitting in a restaurant surrounded by people who are from anywhere but the present location, eating food that someone deemed tourists would like and pay money for, is typically not our cup of tea.

So to help us find interesting places outside our guidebook, we relied heavily upon the website Spotted by Locals.  A friend of our friends in Paris told us about it while we were there, but Prague was the first time we checked it out in a more in depth fashion.  The whole premise of the website is to spread the spotter’s love of their cities with visitors by sharing their favorite places.  You can read the entries online for various cities across Europe, or download a city guide to use offline.

Some of the places are ones that we already knew about or would have found anyway, such as the walkway by the river with views of the Castle, or Lennon’s wall, but the suggestions often gave us a different perspective when visiting.

Others overlapped with recommendations from our hotel, such as Bio Zaharda, a cool organic coffee shop, or Clear Head, one of the best vegetarian restaurants we have been to any where in the world.

Many of them were things we may not have known about otherwise: the French patisserie St. Tropez, tucked away in a shopping complex; the intimate coffee shop Al Cafetero, where we had delicious small meals and coffee from a vacuum pot; or the little Italian cucina Osteria da Clara, where we had our anniversary dinner.  (Incidentally, I am convinced that Italian is better the closer you get to Italy; must eat my way through Italy someday).

Of course, nothing beats wandering across a funky or cool place all on your own.  Maybe it is something undiscovered by tourists, maybe it is something you just happened to miss when reading about the city.  Either way, you never know what you might find: a chill neighborhood bar; a vineyard with surprisingly good wine and excellent views of the city; or a peaceful park with meandering peacocks.

Prague in pictures (aka we took 310 pictures in Prague, somebody has to look at them).

In which we drink lots of beer. And eat pig’s knee.

The good part about Prague’s food is that it goes perfectly with beer.  The bad thing is that it is notoriously short on veggies and very heavy.  To my untrained stomach, it is similar to German food, but…different.  There is always a ton of meat.  It is best to stick with beef or pork.  I ventured over to chicken for one meal, which was a mistake.  I also accidentally ordered the largest piece of pork I’ve ever seen short of an entire pig at a pig roast.  And apparently it was a pig’s knee.  What can I say, I liked the sauce description.  Turns out eating pig’s knee is common in the Czech Republic (and Germany for that matter) and it doesn’t taste half bad.

We like the goulashes a lot, and my favorite meal was beef in “candle sauce” (a creamy, lemony, cranberry type sauce).

I don’t mind the sauerkraut, which shocks me.  Sean keeps trying to tell me that sauerkraut counts as a vegetable, but I don’t buy it.  Maybe the red cabbage.  There are always a lot of potatoes in some form.  The kvednicky (dumplings) are delicious and soaks up all of the beers we drink.

Look, veggies!

For the last two months, we have been mostly in countries that feature wine as their specialty.  I forgot how much I loved beer until we arrived in Prague.  It had been a while since I had a good beer, one from the tap with a thick, foamy head on the top.  That seems to be par for the course in Prague.

Beer is everywhere in Prague, and due to European’s apparent reluctance to drink water out of the tap, indeed sometimes cheaper than water. They even have beer vending machines.

Did you know that there is a beer in the Czech Republic that is called Budweiser (or Budvar in Czech) and it is much more delicious than Budweiser at home?  I did not know this until we had some in Paris.  They are two different companies.  It is not fair that we get stuck with the crappy Budweiser.  We have had some giant, foamy Budvars since our arrival.

Budvar’s biggest competitor in the Czech Republic is Pilsner Urquell, a beer Americans are more familiar with.  The original Pilsner Urquell brewery is in Plzen, which is an hour and forty minutes from Prague by train.  We ventured to the brewery, and saw the bottling process, tasted hops, malt and barley, saw the copper vats where the beer is brewed for 5 weeks, and tasted an unfiltered beer from their special cellar.  We enjoy drinking cask beer at home, which is served at a higher temperature.  Perhaps that is why we enjoyed the Czech beer, because it is served at a higher temperature than most Americans are used to.  The best beers here have been the ones on draught served unfiltered and unpasteurized.  Apparently they have more vitamin B that way, which is a bonus.  I am probably lacking essential vitamins due to the lack of vegetables.

Here are our three favorite places we drank beer in Prague:

(1) Breaking my normal rule of no chains, we ate and drank one night at The Pub, which is a Czech chain with several locations in Prague and smaller cities.  At the Pub, you can pour yourself an unfiltered Pilsner Urquell from the tap at your table.  The computerized screen automatically displays how much beer you have poured, and also shows your tally on a large screen for the whole room to see.  The screen displays the top ten tallys for the restaurant, as well as a separate top ten for all of the Pub’s locations.  Our immediate thought was, [our friend] Stayduhar could totally crush this competition. As a table of two, we never made it to the top ten of all of the locations, but we are proud to say we stayed on the board for the Praha 1 location.  Thank goodness for public transportation.

(2) On our way back to our hotel from metro after our visit to The Pub, we happened across a little bar up the street from our hotel.  You want to go in? I said.  Sure, Sean replied.  What’s one more beer? It was immediately obvious this place did not get many tourists.  Lit by candlelight, with David Bowie in the background, you could tell that this was the type of place people came to chill.  And chill people did, including the people at the table behind us, who were passing a joint around their table. Spying the unfiltered beers on the menu, we gave more specificity than normal when we ordered, requesting two beers, large, unfiltered.  Right, the bartender said.  So you mean two beers.  Regular beers. They were large, foamy, and delicious.  Sean’s one turned into two.  When we went to pay, we misheard the bartender and thought he said 180 Czech crowns, an amount which would have been around $8.50 for three half liter beers.  No, said the bartender. I said 108. (Around $5 USD). 180? He laughed.  That would be expensive.  Right. Expensive.

(3) I would have to put the Pivovarsky Klub on the list for its awesome name, even if it didn’t turn out to be as cool as it was.  A little off the normal tourist track in Karlin, it was visited by Anthony Bourdain in the Prague episode, and also mentioned on the blog SpottedbyLocals.

Somewhat inadvertently, we also ended up visiting its sister restaurant Pivovarsky Dum, which is a microbrewery.

The beer is great at both places, but we preferred the food at the Pivovarsky Klub.  The Pivovarsky Klub has six beers on draught.  At least one will be from its sister restaurant, and most of the others are a good sampling of other types of Czech beer besides Pilsner Urquell and Budvar.  They also have tons of bottled beers from all over the world.  (The American representatives, if you are curious, are Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada).  This wide variety of beer might not be unusual in the United States, but in Europe, there is typically only have one or two choices on tap, making ordering beer as simple as saying, two beers, please.

A Whole Lot of Nothing

I was going to write lots of posts about Valencia, especially since we were there for 10 days, but sitting here in Prague, Valencia seems like a distant memory.

It is not that we didn’t enjoy our time there. Like all of the Spanish cities we visited, we really liked Valencia. It is just that nothing exciting happened while we were there. I mentioned previously that due to our excitement over staying in an apartment for a change, we spent a lot of time relaxing. There is not much you can say about that. First, we slept in. Second, we made eggs for breakfast. Third, we surfed the internet and read. Fourth, we went for a walk.  Fifth, we looked for a replacement camera…

It was nice to relax in Valencia, because the two months so far have been anything but relaxing. Travel is stressful. Every day involves countless decisions, endless feelings of unfamiliarity, money limitations, getting lost, and figuring things out. Simple tasks often are a two step process, because all too often something goes wrong the first time and you have to set out again, with newly acquired information, to accomplish what you wanted to do the first time. Even something as simple as getting something to eat can be a big production, because first you have to figure out where to go, how to get there, what exactly they are serving, what to order, how much to order, how to express what you want, and how much it is. Even simple sightseeing or wandering is tiring – there is a lot more activity in our days than we ever experienced sitting at our desks back home. Look, travel fatigue is a problem I know many people who are stuck at work would kill to have, but it is a problem nonetheless. And you may not believe me, but there are days where I am hot, tired, and cranky where I have actually muttered the words, I might rather be at work than deal with this.

Of course, we all know that’s not really true.

So if one is in the mood to just hang out for a while, Valencia is the perfect city to do so.   After spending two weeks in Spain in earlier in our trip, and leaving and re-entering on three separate occasions, Spain began to feel familiar and more like home, which is what we needed for a little while.  Compared to other Spanish cities, there seemed to be less tourists, and more Valencians just living their lives. The weather was sunny almost every day. Although it often topped 80, it got decent breezes from the sea. Some years back, the city diverted its river, and put a park in its place. The result is a winding green space in the old riverbed, where at any given time people are lounging, playing soccer, running, riding bikes, or walking.

Valencia is at once both very modern and very historic. There is a dichotomy between its architecture. Many of the buildings seemed to be blah, ugly high rises.

Yet it also has grand historic buildings, such as the site of the former silk market, or its cathedral housing the Holy Grail (the cup from which Jesus reportedly drank at the Last Supper).

It also is home to the very futuristic City of Arts of Sciences, a fantastic complex of geometric lines.

You would think that a city on the Mediterranean would be focused on the sea, but if it wasn’t for the fresh seafood everywhere, you would almost forget that Valencia is seaside. The beach, or at least the portion we visited, is nothing to write home about, but there are fantastic paella restaurants up and down the promenade. Valencia is the birthplace of paella, and actually features chicken and rabbit as the main type of paella. All of the rice based dishes we had were fantastic, owing to the local rice.

It is a good thing our need to cook coincided with our stay in Valencia, which abounds with local, fresh produce. In addition to oranges, we had great local tomatoes and olive oil. Besides the neighborhood bakery where we often made meals out of empanadas, we were frequent customers at the Central Market. As the name implies, it is a large market in the center of town, featuring every type of food you could need to cook a feast. The first day we visited, we literally followed our noses, letting our sniffers lead us to the sweetest smelling strawberries.

We can vouch that Valencia is a good place to go shopping, both of the real and window variety. I spent some time wandering in and out of funky shops in the Barrio de Carmen neighborhood. We surely visited every camera store in Valencia for our search for a replacement camera and accessories. We also surely visited every shoe store in Valencia in my search for a replacement for sandals that were not a good fit. Although shoe shopping in Spain was now old hat, it became increasingly clear with every shoe store that I apparently have the largest feet ever known to mankind. I wear a US size 10. Prepared in advance this time, my research indicated that a 10 converted to a 42. Upon inquiry of whether the store might have a certain shoe in a size 42, the response typically was 42? Commence sharp intake of breath and vehement head shaking. Oooh. Maybe a 41. There is no way we have a 42. Then the salesperson would return with a 40. Maybe this would work?

From Shopping in Valencia

Luckily, I found a stylish, comfortable Spanish brand called Wonders where I took a 41. In case you haven’t noticed my repeating wardrobe, it primarily consists of a green shirt and blue shirt. Combined with my blue purse, I have been sporting a very blue and green centric look. So of course the only Wonders sandals (or really, any sandals) that fit me was a colorful blue and green pair. They are blue leather with green soles. I think I found the only size 41 in the entire city. I should know, as every time I saw a shoe store, I popped in to see if they had size 41 Wonders in a different color so I wouldn’t be so monochromatic. They didn’t, so blue and green it is. I later realized that the walls in our Valencia apartment are painted blue and green. I am surrounded by blue and green.

Two months…and we are back in business!

We left Pittsburgh exactly 60 days ago.  On one hand, it feels like we have been travelling forever, but we are only 2/12 of the way through our trip.

The first two weeks in Spain felt like a vacation: new, different, and fun.  Then the second two weeks in Paris were like a more exciting version of home, with friends and homey apartment comforts.  Then there was Morocco, and, well, you know how that was.  Returning to Spain again felt familiar, and we’ve spent a lot of the time ironing out the kinks of our travel style and getting into a groove.

Some things are obvious: we get pretty cranky without constant internet; we are not a fan of shared bathrooms, but will do it if we absolutely have to; and a car is not always the best way to travel.  It is fun bouncing around, but it is tiring and leaves little time for down time.  So we’ve decided for the Eastern/Central Europe portion of our trip that we are going to try to see less and stay at least a week in each location.  One thing that is pretty clear is that the quality of our accommodations directly affects our happiness, but it is also the biggest component of our budget.  We added up how much we spent on everything so far, and if continue at this pace, we’ll be 50% over our yearly budget.  Yikes.  But that figure is misleading, because we are doing the most expensive part of our trip first.  Or at least it better be.

Some homesickness has kicked in, particularly for me, and so to remedy that, we ended up chilling in an apartment for 10 days in Valencia.  I’ll write more about Valencia later, but the reality is we haven’t been doing a whole lot other than enjoying life like this is our home and it is a perpetual weekend.  (Well, what we imagine a weekend to be like, because Sean and I spent most of our weekends back left were either working at work (me) or working on our house (mostly him).  We really like the idea of having a temporary apartment.  It lets you daydream about living in a foreign land for a while.  We actually have had two apartments in Valencia.  We first booked one at 11 Flats for 3 days, and got a great deal (about $54/night) because it was booked last minute and filled the gap for the rental company.  See – just like home:

Then we decided that maybe we weren’t in such a hurry to move on, and booked another apartment through the same company at 5 flats for 7 days (about $76/night).

Both apartments are in the heart of the Barrio de Carmen neighborhood, feel positively enormous compared to the tiny hotel rooms in which we have stayed, have fast internet, and modern decor.  Our current place even has a washing machine, which is really the holy grail for “backpackers.”  I decided to wash my clothes today just because I could.  The apartments, of course, also have kitchens, which has allowed us to shop at the markets and cook real meals.  (So Matt, tell your Aunt Ceci not to worry, we won’t have to eat out for 365 days straight).

We’ve also been filling our days with running errands, a need that does not disappear when you cross borders.  One big errand we accomplished is re-purchasing our camera.  It looks like our renters insurance is going to cover the camera, minus a $500 deductible.  We’ve been scouring Valencia for a replacement since we arrived last week.  There are not many camera stores in Valencia, and our internet searches turned up nothing.  It took days of scouting to find what we needed, accomplished by a combination of asking the reception desk at the apartment company, asking a random photography studio, and keeping our eyes peeled while we walked around in popular shopping areas.  In the off chance anyone is ever in Valencia and in need of a camera or equipment, check out the El Corte Ingles department store on Colon (think Macys, with electronics), a photo store by the bullring (think independent photo store), FNAC on some street I forget (think Best Buy), and FotoPrix in the Nuevo Centro mall (think Ritz Camera).  Sean entertained himself by re-researching camera options.  He dreamed of going smaller and getting something new to play around with, I dreamed of taking pictures with my SLR again.  We pondered lots of alternatives, such as getting a compact micro four thirds camera, or reducing our zoom capabilities by getting a smaller lens.  In the end, when we stumbled across the same camera and lens we had before as a set for a great price, Sean’s dreams of lightening our load were dashed one more time.  We are now the proud owners of a Canon XSi (450D here in Europe) and 18-200 mm lens once again.  Yippee!