Wednesday, 8 May 2024 The rest of the way to Prague

Written 29 May 2024

We got to Charles De Gaulle airport without serious incident and spent a couple of hours there in the Air France lounge, laid out for a lovely expanded-continental breakfast supplemented by bacon, scrambled eggs, and breakfast potatoes.

We didn't partake, however. We'd just eaten on the plane, and at this point, our stomachs had no idea what time it was.

On the 1.25-hour flight on to Prague, we were served (at 10:30 am!) a cold collation of tabouleh, a tiny poached egg on puréed green peas, a warm bread bun, butter, a delicious chocolate cream puff, and wedges of Cantal cheese and (one of my all-time favorites) crottin de Chavignol. Now that's where chalky dairy products belong! In dry little goat cheeses like that!

People scheduled for three different Viking cruises arrived on our flight, so a whole platoon of red-shirted, clip-board toting, Viking staff weer waiting at the airport to marshal us (and those arriving for four other cruises on other flights) into small buses for the trip to the Prague Hilton—"the big one," our program director Eva later called it, "not the other one." At the airport, we met Chris and Pam, a couple from the UK, who were actually on the same preextension of the same cruise we were.

On the ride from the airport, I spotted many well-known international brands—KFC, H&M, McDonalds, Starbucks— but the scenery was still lovely. The lilacs were mostly gone by, but a few were still in bloom, and the horsechestnuts were in their glory.

Prague is such a busy hub for Viking that the whole lower lobby was given over to Viking desks, one for each of the many cruises coming and going in different directions (or using Prague as a pre- or postextension). Viking has only two ships on the Elbe—when Beyla (ours) is headed from Prague to Berlin, Astrild is headed from Berlin to Prague. They pass each other at the mid point. No other company cruises the Elbe, so aside from day boats out of Dresden, we saw no other cruise ships on this trip.

We reported to the Beyla desk, where we met Eva, our Program Director, who would be accompanying us all the way to the end of our stay in Berlin.

Our rooms were ready, so we checked in. I got a couple of good shots of the hotel's central atrium from the glass-walled elevator. At the left, you can easily see the blue-carpeted, white canopied mezzenine, where the hotel's bistro was located, and below it (dark at this time of day) the breakfast restaurant.

At the right, from higher up, I got a good view of the striking piece of art suspended in the center (you can just make out the bottom edge of it in the left-hand photo). It consists of dozens of vertical rods of different lengths, with knobs on the ends, arranged in rows to form a sphere with outlying color accents. Amazing.

We spent a little time freshening up before Eva took a small group of us (actually, just David and me and Pam and Chris) out for a short orientation walk around the neighborhood‐sunshine is the best thing for jet lag.

She pointed out a well-known café, the Imperial, which she warned us we probably wouldn't be able to get into—we tried for a reservation later (by which I mean we asked the nice folks at the Viking desk to do it for us), and she was right—so she recommended we press our noses to the window to get a glimpse of its famous tiled pillars. My photo is full of random reflections in the glass (including, now that I look closely, a very good image of Chris), but you can just make out the columns of porcelain tiles.

The long pink building in the right-hand photo is the Palladium, a large shopping mall. The main entrance is below the square clock tower.

Along the way, I spotted the first of what would prove to be very popular tree plantings—red- and pink-flowered horse-chestnuts! I've looked them up since. They're hybrids between the ordinary horse-chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum)and the red buckeye (A. pavia).

We also passed this eye-catching row of "old" cars, including some sportier models down at the far end. They are, in fact, replicas, and you can rent them, with driver, by the hour for tours of the city.

At the right here is the city's art-nouveau principal concert hall. It was currently featuring an exhibition of puppets, photographs, storyboards, sketches, and so forth from Tim Burton's films.

At the left edge of the photo you can just see the tall, black "Powder Tower," so called because black powder used to be stored there. Like many of the towers in this town and others, it was a city gate before the city wall was taken down.

At the right is a little better view of the Powder Tower, the best one I got, I'm afraid. The tower dates from 1400 and marks the edge of the old town, which we were then free to go ahead and explore on our own, but we'd been traveling for a long time by then and decided to go back to the hotel. Eva guided us back a few blocks, to where we could see a straight shot back.

Along the way, she had us step just inside a building she knew of to sight up the center of it's strange staircase, shown here at the left.

At the right is the window of a pastry shop. Two rows to the right of the little green apples is a row of chocolate spheres studded with little red spikes, labeled "Virus." They're apparently intended to represent COVID viruses. Two rows to the right of that are bright red "eggnog roses." It all looked yummy.

She pointed out a larger-than life bright red, larger-than-life, winged stag suspended over the mouth of an alleyway (which I didn't get a good shot of). It marks the entrance to the famous "Red Stag" restaurant and tavern, in an old bank building. You can apparently request a table in the vault.

Finally, she told us that electric tram #8, which passed within a block or two of the Hilton, would conveniently take us back to the edge of old town, if we wanted to explore more tomorrow. In Prague, all public transport is free for those over 65; just show ID. In addition, Uber works well in Prague. Eva warned us never to hail a taxi in the street. Instead, you should have a restaurant or horel call one for you; Triple-A taxis are trustworthy, she said

Despite several promising recommendations by Eva, we had no energy left to go out for dinner, so we just had supper at the hotel's bistro, starting with these lovely slices of gravlax (cured salmon) with lemon zest and gin.

David was delighted to find that it was asparagus week in Prague. He loves asparagus and remembers very fondly a speaking tour he did some decades ago of several German universities during "Spargelzeit"—asparagus season. So he took advantage by ordering this lovely asparagus plate for dinner: thinly sliced ham, buttery new potatoes, and green and white asparagus. The sauce in the boat by his hand is a fluffy hollandaise.

I tried one of the "local flavors: braised beef with creamy vegetable sauce, Karlsbad dumplings, and cranberry jam. Strangely, the sauce, although tasty enough, was quite sweet. The beef had been rolled around a thick carrot stick and, as far as I could tell, a strip of beef marrow. My hypothesis is that the pink bulls-eye pattern around it arose from the same chemical reaction that causes a "smoke ring" in, e.g., smoked brisket.

The beef, sauce, and jam were very good, but I can't say I liked the dumpling much. As you can see, they were made of diced bread, seasoned, packed together, and either baked or steamed in a mold, then sliced in half. That sounds really good, like a glob of free-standing turkey stuffing, but in fact, you couldn't cut them without a knife. They were extremely dense and tough and gummy.

For dessert, we split a pastry selected from this assortment (the brown one on the middle shelf, filled with whipped cream dense with almond brittle). This photo shows only half the available selection.

The Prague Hilton is three-wastebasket hotel, because the toilet and shower room are separate; but it also gets demerits because two of the wastbaskets are covered.