You may have noticed we have been neglecting this Prague blog a bit. It’s a mix of various factors. First, we’re now in the middle of the high season for our Prague food tours, and our time to write about the nice places we’ve found is quite limited these days. Also, the heatwaves did not help. We get super lazy above 35C/95F, and honestly, you can’t blame us. And then there was another thing. A (not so) secret project, if you will.
It is not every day we get to introduce an entirely new product here. But this is the day. For a few months now, we have been slowly working on a small foodie guide for Prague. We’re 99% there, and with a bit of luck and effort, the guide will go to print next week. It should be ready and out some time in September. Question: have you ever worked on a project, spent seven days doing the first 80% and then the next seven months trying to finish the remaining 20%? This is that project for us. Trust us - we can’t wait to see it in print.
Why another Prague guide?
Well, because we think there’s not enough of them. At least not the ones that fit the way we like to travel. Let’s be honest here, the options are limited. Sure, you can buy the major brands, and some of them include great information, but we think they do not always reflect the patters of modern travel for various heritage reasons. And they are all too long, we think. Two hundred friggin’ pages pages for a three-day stay? It takes more time to read the guide than actually see the city.
On the other hand, there are some cool, independent guides for Prague already. Karen’s Artel Style Prague Guide is great, and we love to leave it in our rental apartment for our guests. The Wallpaper guide for Prague is nice, too, but because it wants to shows current trends, it tends to age quickly, and we’re honestly not huge fans of its food section. Also, it is clearly targeted at a specific demographic and leaves the rest unattended. And other guides are full of advertisements, whether admitted or not. So yes, we think there’s room for another Prague guide. Especially a guide focused on food. A guide we would use ourselves.
Why not a Prague app?
If we had a dollar for every time we were asked this question, we would have like… twenty dollars. At least. No, doing an app for Prague is not in our plans right now. While they may be useful at times, we don’t really like them. First, we like to touch things, and paper in particular. And our guide will be printed on nice paper. Also, an app doesn’t show use or age. But a well-used map? It shows marks of your travel, brings back memories. Also, our experience shows that whenever your iPhone does not allow you to take that important pic of the tasty burrito you’re about to eat because your phone memory is full, apps relating to past travels are the first things you delete. And have we mentioned we like paper already?
Then there’s the technical and practical issues. If you drain your phone’s battery, where’s your guide now, huh? Oh, you forgot your charger in your hotel? Too bad. A paper guide will not put you in a situation like this. And many apps rely on sometimes expensive data plans to uncover their full functionality. While we do provide a solution for that, we still think a paper guide is simply cooler and much more fun. So no apps for now.
Why should you care?
Because we slaved over the guide for months now, and we think it’s going to be pretty cool. And it will be out soon. Why will it be pretty cool? Because of the authors! How could you ask that? Come on!
No, really, we did think about the guide a lot. And then thought about it again, and then some more. We’ve tried to avoid the things we don’t like about most guides, and we’ve tried to include the things we’ve learnt about what people really want in Prague from the guests of our tours.
First, our Prague guide, if you can call it that, is going to be fairly small. Why hundreds of pages for a three-day stay? Many guides want to show value by giving you a lot. We think what adds value is when you give a little, but with great curation. A large guide with 200 restaurants actually takes value away because you’ll be spending hours to read through them and then making your own selection, anyway.
Also, it will include none of the major sights. Why should we write about something that you can google in about ten seconds? We wanted to include things that you cannot google. Where’s the best cafe? What are the best bites in Prague? Where do the locals go? What should you buy in Prague? (And no, it’s not a Russian nesting doll. They’re full of themselves, anyway.)
It will be really nice, too. The guide will be designed by our friend Honza who is one half of the couple behind our beloved Kurator shop. The photographs will be added by Martin of Everbay, whose photographs have graced this website for some time now and who has been taking pictures of the city and its people for a few months now. It will be colorful but easy to read. The map will be easy to handle. And the cover impossible to oversee. At least that’s what we plan to say to distributors when we deliver our pitch.
And it will also contain some cool, insider tips for Prague! We have honestly rewritten some of the tips and swapped our favorite spots several times, to the point of driving Honza, who has to put them all in the map and paginate the whole think, nearly to the edge of insanity and into fits of uncontrollable rage (the fits are a product of our imagination; he’s actually very nice and calm whenever we meet him, but we think it's a charade and he must shiver whenever he sees a new email from us in his inbox). It is SO HARD to pick favorites when you like so many places in Prague! That is also why we’ve invited four local experts to share their tips, too. Which ones? You'll see!
So, to summarize. A new guide for Prague is coming soon. We wrote it. We think you’d like it. Stay tuned for more!