While the city of Prague is beautiful,
with its Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque era architecture, quirky eateries and a seemingly never-ending array of street performers and artists. However, what I will always think of first when I think of this Czech Republic city is Lion saying ‘Take me to the Hilton’ after a bed bug situation at our perfectly located and reasonably priced hostel.
It was the first time I had encountered this nuisance creature and hopefully the last. While they were disgusting, it was the earwig which can crawl into your ear and then lay eggs on your brain, which eventually hatch and drive you mental, until you die. Although the bugs weren’t on our bed, but that of our bunk mate from the US, we opted to get our money back and leave. Lion was so distraught that I just said to him ‘where do you want to go?’ And he replied: ‘Take me to the Hilton’.
A few minutes later I had a bookings.com reservation and we were in a taxi, paid by the hostel, to our new accommodation. Only problem was, it was a long way from where we wanted to explore and had no nearby laundromats. This was only an issue because after you come into contact with bedbugs you are meant to wash everything you own. That would have been easy, if we were in a hostel, near a laundromat or the hotel didn’t want to charge us more than $1000 to wash our clothes. So I turned out 5-star luxury room into a Chinese laundry. The housekeepers must have thought we were nuts. But I did it. I washed everything in the sink and dried it all without a washing line.
Prague Castle was at the top of our sightseeing list, and unfortunately at the top of a massive hill. But we walked up there and the views from the castle and of the castle were worth it. We watched the sun set, then found a cute little restaurant nearby and ate there. The cobblestone alleyways were a constant source of photographic inspiration to us and meant it took a long time to get through this particular old area. We also found a super skinny alleyway that actually had a traffic lights. We saw one similar to this in Stockholm with Peter.
Prague was the cheapest European city we visited but definitely one of the best.
