Praha Neighborhood
ahoj!
This summer vacation to Eastern Europe wasn't really planned before hand. I originally wanted to head south to Spanish lands, but my parents didn't quite agree with me and we randomly decided to travel to the unfamiliar lands of Eastern Europe.
A month before travelling, I was looking up for flights to Prague on Skyscanner.fr, the best deal I got for a family of 4 was from Volotea Airline. I've never heard of this airline, but it was affordable for a summer ticket and confirmed my booking. A few days later, one of my friends were complaining that their flight was delayed for 7 hours without any explanation. I panicked :( Lucky us, turns out everything was on time, I was super shocked at their leather seats. It felt too luxurious to be a budget airline. The only downside was that they distributed 4 of us into different corners when there were seats next to each other. I guess it's their technique to get you spend more money— because, of course, changing seats = $$$
bordeaux to praha
The flight was super early in the morning, 6am flight, I had to get up at 3am to travel to the airport, blah blah blah— it was a hellish sleepy morning, but I managed to catch a tiny glimpse of the sunrise and tried my best to nap during the 2 hour flight. However, my luck with random travelers these days have gone pretty bad. I always end up sitting next to someone who smells bad :(
By now, you'd have understood that I'm not much of a holiday-planner, and forgot that Prague does not use Euros #majorfacepalm. The first thing we did when we landed at Praha airport was to withdraw money. Dad decided to rent a car from Hertz so that we could travel easily between Prague, Vienna and Budapest. We got a little striking blue Skoda Rapido for the week.
One of my besties, Jean was travelling to London for her work trip and she really wanted to visit me, but her dates were clashing with my Eastern Europe trip, so she flew over and joined us later that day. The first 24hours were random picks of where to go, since I didn't want to cover too many places without my friend.
“trdelnik”
We were just randomly roaming the streets and then a wave of yummy bakery fragrance just led us to their shop.
The shop was pretty much empty, my brother and I were super hungry and got ourselves one to share. Dipped in cinnamon powder + sugar and almond nuts + a generous spread of nutella on the insides for 70czk (2.70€), it was definitely worth the calories :)
Do you see what I mean when I say it feels like a land-version of Burano?
Colorful european buildings side by side, reminds me so much of
Burano island in Venice.
“Wenceslas Square”
Image Credit Maso a Kobliha.com
where to eat?
I actually have another micro-blog else where besides here, on an app call Dayre.
It's more like a micro blogging platform for (mostly) Singapore bloggers — that explains all the Singlish written over there, inlcuding myself! During the first day in Prague, I constantly updated my journey, a lovely reader left a few tips on where to go for food.
She left me a list of places where she loved to eat. I decided to go, except it wasn't exactly "parent-friendly" especially if you have traditional asian parents.
Maso a Kobliha
Petrská 23, Praha 1 | www.masoakobliha.cz
On her list of recommendations, I picked Maso a Kobliha because she mentioned eggcellent Scotch eggs. It's a very chill-type restaurant bar with hight table tops and chairs. My mom hates those = *dingdong* there goes a minus point. We actually already had some random food before we came, so we only ordered some entrées to share: Scotch Eggs, Pork Skin, Croquettes. The Scotch eggs came with belachan chilly? O_O I was stoked! However the Pork Skin was super salty, and that set my mom off again #healthyfoodalways
Now you see why she doesn't like this place :X
The AirBnb Hood
As I mentioned that I only booked air tickets about a month before travelling + especially during summer, things can get complicated in Europe. Because everyone's travelling. Hotels get more expensive during these months (July & August) and most AirBnb's are rented. I found a cute little light studio somewhere further out of the city center, it didn't really matter to us because we were driving anyway. We managed to find a parking slot rather easily too. It wasn't too complicated. For drivers, you'd just have to take note that blue-lined slots are only for residents and for outsiders of the area, you'd have to park in white-lined slots.
The host told us not to be late, so we kinda arrived an hour earlier and napped in the car while waiting– all of us were pretty exhausted with a wakeup call at 3am. Unfortunately our host's friend who was supposed to "pick us up" was late for 30minutes. *eye-rolls* I got a little annoyed because you know, we were told not to be late— and then checkin was done in 5minutes. Plus, it was a rare apartment fine, because— there's a lift! HA, leaving in Paris long enough, I understands that Europeans apartments, especially old buildings do not have a lift! Think about all the luggage to drag up to the 5th floor?!
The apartment looked exactly like the photos. It was clean and bright. Maybe too bright. I always thought slanted ceilings + skylight windows were cool until those 2 nights. At night, it was great, because it lets you look out into the starry sky (or a cloudy one) but in the morning, especially in summer the sunrise is super early! Light just shines STRAIGHT into your face. All of us woke up at 6am :X
Pardon that exhausted face.
Our flight was quite full, the checkin counter offered/insisted to checkin my luggage.
Now my poor little yellow luggage has so many battle bruises :(
