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.

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.

What we did in Lisbon besides hang out in the ghetto and get our camera stolen.

Although our view of Lisbon will forever be tainted as the City Where Our Camera Was Stolen and We Stayed in a Ghetto, there is, of course, more to Lisbon than thieves and junkies.  With its cityscape strewn over seven hills, old-fashioned wooden trolleys, and a long and high bridge designed by the same person who designed the Golden Gate Bridge, it is easy to see why people make comparisons to San Francisco.

From Lisbon, Portugal

The trendy Barrio Alto neighborhood is perched on a hill top with views of the rooftops below.  We spent a little time there on a Saturday night, hopping between bars, drinking the sorrows over the stolen camera away.  It seems that most people drink their beverages outside in the cobblestone pedestrian streets.  The beer of choice in Portugal seems to be Super Bock or Sabre Sagres, both of which are unfortunately only a step above Budweiser.  We had a Super Bock while we caught the end of the Inter Milan/Bayern Munich championship futbol game in a bar where rowdy patrons chanted in what must be their equivalent of Here We Go Steelers.  Next, always drawn by live music, we wandered into a Cuban bar that had the best mojitos and a guy playing Beatles, Lenny Kravitz, and Bob Dylan on a guitar with a Latin twist.

Shortly after we sat down, the dorkiest tour group ever entered.  In the span of 15 minutes, a group of about 20 middle aged people crowded the tiny bar.  They were decked out with fanny packs, sweaters draped over shoulders, and flashing tiaras.  They sipped one mojito, took a group photo, and then disappeared, leaving us and the other patrons to enjoy the guitar player.  After checking out a couple of more places and the street scene, we followed the noise to an outdoor concert which sounded like skinhead music to us.  The Barrio Alto is lively and festive, and definitely a fun place to spend a night.

One advantage of staying in our neighborhood was that there were many little restaurants where we were the only tourists around.  Although truth be told, we much preferred the spicy piri-piri chicken or the dogfish in a traditional sauce we tried at a restaurant in Barrio Alto, not the salty grouper or fatty ribs we had a neighborhood place.  It should come as no surprise by now that our (or at least my) favorite food was a pastry.  After reading the glowing reviews of others who have gone before us, we travelled by tram to Belem to try pasteis de nada.  Belem is a neighborhood with lots of museums and monuments, views of the bridge, and a lively park.  In Belem, a bakery has renamed pasteis de nada nata to Pasteis de Belem.  The line for the bakery wrapped up and down the sidewalk, but it didn’t take that long for a table.  It appears that all this bakery does is churn out these Portuguese pastries, all day and night.  I didn’t see one person out of the hundreds of patrons order something different.  Once you try one, it is easy to see why.  Served warm topped with powdered sugar and cinnamon, the pastries are flaky on the outside and creamy on the inside.  This was the best Portuguese pastry we tried, perhaps because most of them are buttery and eggy, not fudgy and chocolately like I prefer.

Our day spent calling the insurance company, searching for the police station, and filing a police report (for insurance purposes) meant that we didn’t end up going to Sintra, a nearby fantasy land of forests and castles, like we wanted, for it was time to return our car in Spain.  Having a car is fun to hit the open road, especially now that we picked up a cable for our Ipod, but it does hold us to a timetable.  We already extended the rental once, and each day we spend in a city means potentially expensive parking and fees for a car we are not using.  If we rent a car again, I’d do it for a region where we hopped around to small towns, because using it in cities is a waste.

Nude Beach

From Western Algarve

The Algarve area of Portugal is tailor made for exploring due to the many beaches lining the southern coast of Portugal.  As you go west, many of the beaches are tucked in between rocky cliffs.  After Tavira, we headed west to Salema, a small fishing village in the southwest corner of Portugal, upon the recommendation of our friends Brad and Rachel.  We used Salema as a base to explore the other beaches.  Salema itself is located down a green meandering country road that leads to the ocean.  (Unfortunately, most of my pictures of the town were the ones located on the camera card in our stolen camera, but I do have some.)

Since our hotel room had a small refrigerator, counter, knife, cutting board and a couple of dishes we took advantage and made some of our own meals.  It also had a corkscrew, allowing us to get our own bottle of Portuguese green wine for under 3 euros.  Since the Algarve is renowned for its seafood, we made sure to eat out one night and tried cataplana, a delicious and flavorful stew with fish, shellfish, tomatos, peppers and lots of spices cooked in special cookware.

We spent one day beach-hopping.  Unlike the crowded, commercial or residential beaches at home, most of the land leading up to the beaches is protected and undeveloped.  We drove down country roads lined with wildflowers, never sure what type of beach would pop up at the end.  We happened to hit on the best one first.  Tucked into between rocky cliffs, the sand was softer than the beach we visited on an island in Tavira.  We found a spot between some beach rocks and listened to the waves crash up against the rocks.  The Atlantic Ocean’s waters were still too nippy to do much swimming, but some people surfed in wet suits.  Sean and a few other swimmers braved the waters for a quick swim.

It didn’t take long to figure out that the beach was divided into segments.  Closest to the road, families with children made sand castles and frolicked in a pool of water leftover from high tide.  Further down, it seemed to be mostly adults.  Like the beach at Tavira, some, but not all, of the woman chose to go topless.  But at the end of the beach – the most scenic part next to the rocky cliff – we quickly realized that many people, both men and woman, were full on nude.  The men in particular seemed to strut up and down the sand in this section of the beach, scholongs waving back and forth.  The funny part about nude beaches is that most of the people who are nude or topless aren’t the ones you probably would want to see.  In case you were wondering, we both don’t feel the need for a head to toe tan.  With my luck, I’d get a nasty sunburn in a place where the sun doesn’t normally shine.

The All Elusive Authenticity.

Like most tourists that visit Seville, we wanted to see two of the things for which Seville is best known: flamenco dancing and bullfighting.

According to the all knowing on the Internet, there are many ways to see flamenco.  There’s the dinner and a show approach at a tablao, all packaged up neatly for tourists.  The advantage is that the dancers are supposedly superb and decked out in full costumes.  The disadvantage is that the shows feel a little touristy, and are expensive: upwards of 35 or 40 euros per person.  There’s also smaller performances at neighborhood bars, many of which are impromptu and often cost no more than the price of your drinks.  The advantage is the more intimate setting and the lower cost; the disadvantage is that sometimes the shows are more low-key.  One person analogized viewing flamenco shows like this: you can see Buddy Guy at a large arena show with lots of other people, or an unknown blues band at a local bar.  The Buddy Guy show is classic blues and technically superior, but the experience at the local bar is likely more authentic.

It really wasn’t that much of a choice for us due to our new frugal lifestyle.  Our google searches revealed the name of a bar supposedly renowned for their free flamenco shows – La Carboneria.  By the looks of it, everyone else did the same google search.  Walking down a dark narrow street off a more lively one, I heard someone say behind us, We’re supposed to look for a red door. Is that a red door?  No, I think that’s more orange. Oh, there it is! The instructions on Google mentioned that the bar was not marked and to look for a red door.  It sounded very mysterious and exciting, which it may have been, had at least 3 or 4 other groups of people not been looking for the same thing.

Though we arrived early, crowds were already packed in on the picnic benches.  Around 11:00 p.m., a woman and three men came to the front of the room.  Two played the guitar and one played the flute while the woman twirled and danced.  She wore a green print dress that she hiked above her knees.  She did not have a lot of room to move.  She stomped around and waived her arms as a sweat broke out on her clavicle.  The performance lasted only about 30 minutes.  I heard a daughter next to me say to her mother, Mom, you’ve only seen flamenco on cruise ships.  This is different.  This is authentic.

The performance wasn’t quite what I imagined, but I was intrigued and I wanted to see more.  Sean was done with “this flamingo dancing.”  I talked him into taking a cab across the river to Triana for another show starting at midnight anyway.

Triana is supposed to be the “birthplace” of flamenco, and I read online that Anselma’s was one of the better places in the city to see casual, impromptu flamenco.  So did at least 100 others.  When we arrived, there was a huge line waiting to get into the bar before midnight when the “show” started.  Meanwhile, there already were people occupying every seat at every table.  Anselma finally opened up the gate, and the line of people streamed into the bar.  When we finally came to a halt, I couldn’t move.  There were people standing within inches of me on all sides, and still more people struggled to get by.  Anselma made herself known, pushing past people to insist that they get a drink.  Occasionally, people we were more important than Sean or me were escorted to premier spots in the bar.  One was apparently such a VIP that Anselma booted two people out of their seats and cleared the way for a guy in a suit and his date.  Huh.  Guess we should suited up, as our backpacker clothes were not getting us any special treatment.

We lasted for one drink and couldn’t take feeling like a sardine in a can anymore.  We didn’t see anyone dance, but heard some people play music that sounded excellent.  So much for our “authentic” flamenco experience…stay tuned for our bullfighting experience which was a little too authentic for my liking.