Once again we made a trip to our favorite eastern bloc city: Prague. Lindsey and her friend Lauren thought it would be great to head out to Prague, our fairy tale city of choice.  Lauren has travelled extensively in Europe but had never been to the Czech Republic before.  We couldn’t resist the chance to present to her a city that reminds us of Disneyland.  We left home at 9am and made it to the Prague-Arcaden mall by 11:30am. We first stopped at the border crossing and paid a quick 16 euros for a vignette, the vehicle sticker that lets us travel unhassled on the autobahn for 10 days. Then, we tried to park at our favorite Park and Ride, next to the Zlicin stop on the metro. But, handy signs on the autobahn let us know that there were no available spaces at the P+R stops so we made a decision to park at the mall and chance not having a “security guard” watching our car for the day.
Not a problem, it turns out. The mall is a nice one with Rip Curl, Starbucks and H+M on hand. We simply walked through the convenient pedestrian tunnel connecting the mall with the metro stop to purchase our metro day tickets (110 Czech Kroene=$5) and after a 20 minute metro ride, made it to the Old Town by 12:30pm.  The three of us hit the Mucha museum first and I highly recommend this delightful little museum featuring the posters and art work by Alphonse Mucha.  Following a tasty salad lunch at a restaurant near the St Charles bridge, we crossed over the Vltava River and took Tram #22 up to the Castle Complex.  This time in Prague, we took the tram to the monastery high up on the hill and managed to score a new view of the city from this great height. We walked down to the cathedral, castle and other buildings in castle complex and wound our way through the vineyards before making back to the car (after a brief stop at the mall Starbucks–open til 10:00pm) and home by 9pm.  Whew…an exhausting but satisfying day!