I need sleep so I’ll need to clean these up later but I don’t want to forget anything. Today was finally a rather relaxed day. I just struck out walking and walked from my place up to Prague Castle and checked that out, then back across the Charles Bridge and stopped for lunch at Ristorante Rugantino. Good food but superlative service. After that I had to swing by the store on the way home which happens to be next to the know famous motorized statue of Kafka. I rested at home for a while before heading out to my best meal so far at Eska. That dinner deserves its own post which I’ll hopefully get around to!
Author: Nomad
Day 9 | June 4
Today was our “Big Day” orientation for the entire year. I was initially ambivalent about attending but I did and I was very glad of it. In addition to the usual orientation activities everyone introduced themselves and it was great to get another round of reinforcement as to who everyone is! After that I tried to come home and work but ended up dozing off instead. We had our first lost cell phone in the Uber we took back to the place so we had to track that down. Later in the evening we had our welcome party at K10 which was awesome and included a great bar and food and a traditional “Czech Easter Egg Hunt.” After that we tried to have a low key evening back at our apartment building but that didn’t pan out and one of our apartments was destroyed. Glossing over that… we took care of things and then I went upstairs to finally go to sleep.
Day 8 | June 3
Beginning to sense that it’s going to be hard to keep up with daily updates. Hopefully I can backtrack and fix these this weekend. Another late start to the day after a late night. I had lunch at the Blue Wagon which is an excellent restaurant just two blocks down from my place. Headed in to our K10 work space to do some work after that and got thrown a curve ball which left me under the gun for the rest of the day. After racing out of the office after that I managed to get home in time to change and head over to the State Opera to see Tosca with some of the other members of my group. After the opera we went to dinner at Como and then I attempted to call it an early evening at the crack of… 1am.
Day 7 | June 2
After another late night I ended up sleeping in. When I finally roused myself up I headed over to our K10 workspace and stopped on the way at a cafe that I’d seen before. Kavarna Zanzibar is on a nice but not very well traveled traffic circle. They have a prixe fixe menu for lunch and I had risotto, mushroom soup and a couple cups of coffee. Then I headed in to work for the afternoon. In the evening we had lunch at the Letna beer garden which is in the Letenske Sady park which overlooks the city. For some reason they had fireworks in the city this evening as well. Then we walked in to old town for dinner and we managed to call it an early night at the crack of 1am.
Day 6 | June 1
After a night that escalated rather quickly I slept in this morning. I had a lot of work today so I headed over to K10 as soon as I had pulled myself together and basically settled in to work all day. In the evening, though, we headed back to Dlouha and did a whole row of shops. The first was a butcher shop/restaurant that I can’t remember the name of. It was a great place in that you could order cuts of meat to take home but they’d also grill them for you to eat there if you liked. Then we went next door for cigars and scotch at La Casa Del Habano and then went next door again to La Casa Argentina for steaks and wine.
Day 5| May 31
This morning began very easily with a very heavy rainstorm that made for a very cool and gorgeous morning around 5:00. I tried to go back to sleep after that but failing to do so I slowly eased into the day and once again researched a cool cafe to go start my day at. …spoiler alert! Once again it was closed! So I stopped at some random place I can’t remember and headed over to our K10 work space. I had a lot of work today so that’s mostly what I focused on.
Our group does this thing “lunch roulette” where you basically say you are free at X time and they organize you with four random members of the team and send you to a random restaurant. I did that today and we walked over to the restaurant that was picked for us. …but… it was closed as well! Turns out there was a water main break or something on the block so they had no water. We ended up having lunch across the street at a Vietnamese place that was excellent.
I went back to work after that for a long time until dinner when a group of about ten of us went to a Mexican restaurant which was, surprisingly, also great. After that I met up with some other members of my group and we went to a bar that is situated in the Prague TV tower and has some great views of the city.
I have to say, I was extremely underwhelmed by this place. It’s your typical tourist trap; outdated, overpriced, lazy. But after that we went out dancing down on Dlouha where all the bars are and that more than made up for it.
Day 4 | May 30
After an aggressive evening last night I slept in until it was time to get ready to head over to our first meeting and orientation today. We met at our new work space which is in a word… awesome.
We had a short meeting to go over the lay of the land as it pertains to the work space. Our hosts were kind enough to provide lunch while we did this. After some brief exploring I settled in to catch up on some work. Sadly, that’s how I spent most of the day until dinner when about 30 of us got together for dinner at the “Beer Museum”. Many of us were still recovering from the night before, though, so I called it an early night.
Day 3 | May 29
Another exhausting day. I woke up early as part of my continuing effort to adjust to this new time zone and struck out to find some breakfast. Once again I had carefully researched where I wanted to have breakfast and once again that plan fell through. So, I had to resort to wandering the streets of Prague again until I found a place to eat at the Cafe Orient. After that my desire for some American coffee drove me back to Starbucks for a to-go cup and then I headed back to my hotel to check out. After I checked out I spent some time in the cafe doing some work before I headed over to my new digs. I know there’s probably some curiosity so…
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After settling in we went out for beers with the new team and… kept getting beers. We closed down three different places and now… here we are… it’s 2 am and time to crash. Overall, a strong start to what will hopefully be a strong year.
Restaurant: Grand Cafe Orient
Once again my carefully laid meal plans fell apart. After finding that my original destination was too packed to accommodate me I started wandering aimlessly until I came across Grand Cafe Orient.
The building has an impressive facade and a second story terrace that drew me in. I also believe the building contains a cubism museum and the cafe itself is billed at a “cubist cafe.” What that means I have no idea. …My food wasn’t even cubed.
I opted for an espresso and the “complete breakfast” which wasn’t so much a meal as the constituent elements of one.
This is yogurt, corn flakes, a boiled egg, ham, cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, bread, honey and apricot jam. Not knowing what to do with all this I dumped the cornflakes into the yogurt like granola which was actually pretty good.
Overall, it made for a satisfying breakfast but nothing to write home about (just blog) and probably not worth your time unless you’re… you know… really into cubes.
Day 2 | May 28
I woke up early today to try and get adjusted to now being eight hours ahead of my old time zone. I had high hopes to catch up on some work in a local Prague cafe so I looked up one in my neighborhood that offered free WiFi and set out. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that Prague does not wake up as early as I do and that the cafe I had settled on was not open. Undertaking my usual wandering aimlessly didn’t turn up any better results either. It seemed everything was closed that early on a Saturday morning. Well… just about everything. Which is how I found myself traveling half-way across the world only to once again be sitting in a Starbucks working. Just like I would be at home.
After a productive morning I resolved to escape that Starbucks and get the lay of the land. I once again bean wandering around aimlessly and just happened to find myself passing through many of the big tourist areas of town before making my way back to my hotel by sheer luck as well. At this point it was starting to rain so I called it for a while and ended up falling asleep. When I woke up I set out for dinner and discovered Bredovský Dvůr which was excellent. I hung out there for too long before coming back home to try and be well rested for a next day full of introductions.