Prague Part II: More Hotels than Streets

One of the drawbacks of Prague's legendary beauty (and there are few) is that it is... well... legendary. Other people know about it and they want to see it too! Downtown Prague famously has more hotels than streets, a fact not hard for me to believe as I walked down some of those streets and heard more English, German, and Spanish than I did Czech. At times this had its advantages, considering how woefully terrible I am at Czech. Mostly, though, it kind of killed the mood. At times I started to forget I was in Prague at all and wonder how I'd arrived in Disneyland's "Fairy Tale Europe" park.*

Fortunately, my fellow tourists were easy to avoid. Here are the measures I took to do so.


1. I stuck to side streets. They run parallel to their foreigner-flooded counterparts and are just as beautiful. I would even go so far as to claim that they're more beautiful because they're a) nearly empty, b) narrower and more winding, and c) more likely to contain cafés and restaurants than shops selling plastic beer steins that say "I <3 Prague" on them.

2. I got up early. This was not something that was easy for me to do, but it was completely worth it. The Charles Bridge is simply not visible in the daytime. Yes, you can walk across it in direct sunlight, but all you will likely see is the baseball cap of the guy in front of you. Okay, I'm exaggerating a tad, but while the hustle and bustle of tourists and street vendors on the bridge is a sight in its own right, it detracts significantly from the majesty bridge itself. The solution: dragging myself out of bed before dawn Easter morning, boarding a tram full of Easter-basket-toting Czechs, and walking across the bridge at sunrise. Corny? Yes. Unforgettable? Absolutely. As an extra bonus, the rest of the city was also nearly deserted after sunrise, so I had an entire breathtaking Eastern European capital to myself for an hour.


3. I read my guidebook. It seemed counter-intuitive to seek out advice on avoiding tourists from a source dedicated to telling tourists where to go, but there's a very large self-loathing (and by that I mean each-other-loathing) demographic among tourists, and Lonely Planet--in their Prague book at least--is wise enough to cater to it. The first big success in this category was the self-guided "Hidden Gardens" walking tour in the sight-seeing section. Gardens aren't really my thing, but the "hidden" part appealed to me. Since spring isn't totally in full-swing yet, the gardens themselves were less than impressive, but as they were out of the way, the tour took me through some lovely areas that, while central, I would not have otherwise known to visit. Another success was a café called Literání Kavárna Řetĕsovă (highly recommended!!!) where the smoke-filled air chased the tourists away and I got to enjoy a cup of coffee and feel very much like a savvy and adventurous expat.

My conclusion: There are, in fact, still parts of Prague where you won't see some unfortunate Czech college student with bills to pay dressed up like a medieval castle guard, and and these parts are (thankfully) really quite easy to locate.

*(which does not, to the best of my knowledge, exist)