Day twenty-one: Wet Prague
Up the funicular - twice in one month!
Our day started well when we discovered a metro station a literal stone's throw from the Airbnb, and so we took the line C back to the station to time the journey for Thursday morning – 15 minutes, once we were on the metro – and set about finding some lunch.
The metro station in Hlavní Nádraží is the other side of the road from the mainline station, but you don't reliase this until you figure out where you are as it is unsurprisingly, under ground. We took the opportunity to pick up some public transport maps, then went exploring. When you leave the metro station you emerge into a park with food stalls – I really fancied a currywurst – and youths practising their parkour on the ventilation shafts that run up from the tunnels below, as well as the odd alcoholic here and there and occasional armed police, keeping a healthy distance. Everybody seemed to be getting on with their different lives in relative harmony.
We didn't stay long once the parkour stopped, and within a few minutes of leaving the park, companion announced the desire to eat. I could've demolished a currywurst back at the station, but we found ourselves examining the menu at the first place we stopped at and had the soup of the day – mushroom again, but tomorrow's is tripe, so that was a narrow miss – followed by Kachní Paštika, brusinky, domáci chléb for companion (duck pâté and cranberries with bread) and Nakládaný hermelin, domáci chléb (pickled Hermelin cheese) for me. Both were yummy. I had beer with mine. The waitress was very helpful and receptive to my risible attempts at please and thank you – prosím and děkuji – which helped her avoid responding to phone number requests from the men on the table behind us.
As we reached Wenceslas Square it was already starting to spit with rain. Prague is very colourful but is not helped by clouds, especially as it seems that everything is being rebuilt, and as I've been here before I didn't have the luxury of the sheen of discovery. Still, we pressed on and when it started to threaten to rain properly, we decided to spend the day riding the trams with no particular goal.
By the time we rode the funicular up to Petřín – included in our travel card – the weather was making good on its promise, and so we decided to follow the paths back down to the bottom of the hill, desperately looking for a view. Sadly, our efforts were thwarted by the grey that had descended and increasing levels of dampness, so we waited forlornly under an awning for a tram to come, and then rode it until we found a stop with a shelter.
At Andĕl we sat with Aperol Spritzers and watched the Škodas go by until we determined it time to get the metro home.
When we emerged at Kačerov, summer was no more and the entire station was awash, as was the bridge over the bus station and the road back to the flat. We were drenched, and unhappy. The milk we bought in the supermarket turned out to be some kind of drinking yoghurt and curdled on impact with the tea. We had takeaway pizza.
Hopefully tomorrow will be kinder to us.