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Prague local favorites: Veltlin

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Prague local favorites: Veltlin

The interesting thing about Karlin’s Holy Foodie Trinity, i.e. Muj salek kavy, Tea Mountain and Veltlin, is that none of these places are about food. But it still lures foodies from the entire town to enjoy great coffee, tea and wine. We do love the Veltlin wine bar for many reasons, the main one being the owner, Bogdan Trojak. Bogdan is a fascinating man: a poet, a writer, a winemaker, the founder of the “Authentic” (read “natural”) winemakers and the man behind the awesome Prague Drinks Wine festival. He’s also one of the nicest people on the Prague foodie scene.


Prague cafes with outdoor seating

Prague cafes with outdoor seating

Yes, the days are getting longer and the temperatures are getting higher, which can only mean two things: the spring is officially here, and we can finally enjoy food and drinks outside! We love to sit outside if the restaurant and/or cafe allows it: you can get a tan (and after the long winter, we need some, seriously), eat some nice food or enjoy some drinks, and just carelessly watch the people walking by, which is probably our favorite past-time. It’s like watching theatre, so don’t judge us, okay? Also, there’s nothing like reading a book with shades and sipping a nice drink to go with it. Honestly. We’ve tried it and it’s great. 

In the upcoming weeks, we will bring you one or two posts about our favorite places in Prague to eat and drink outside so that you can enjoy them during the relatively short summer season here in Prague. We start with our favorite cafes with outdoor seating areas. 


More Prague events coming up this week

More Prague events coming up this week

Now, we were not really planning on it when we wrote last week's post about upcoming events in Prague, but it seems that events and happenings of all kinds are blossoming in Prague and the summer ahead of us will be a busy one if you like to eat, shop... and socialize. We bring you a recap of Prague spring events that are coming up this week. Let's just hope the weather will cooperate and you get to see them all. Gosh, we wish we could. Have fun!


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Prague events this week: what to see and where to eat?

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Prague events this week: what to see and where to eat?

As a guest of our yesterday’s food tour said, May is a great time to visit Prague: the trees are blossoming, the weather is great and everything is green. But it’s not just the nature that wakes up after a half-year hiatus. The social life seems to start blossoming in May, too, and with a few interesting events taking place mid to late May, you can tap into that scene, too. We bring you a short last-minute overview of the events coming up the next week, the associated venues, and - of course - the eateries nearby. Because let’s be honest: it’s all nice and all to look at buildings, design or listening to music, but when you’re hungry, you’re hungry, okay?


Our Paris Trip

Our Paris Trip

It's official. We love Paris. But it took us a while and a few visits to get there, and we did have a rocky relationship with Paris: on one hand, it is clearly one of the most beautiful cities anywhere. On the other hand, we always had some kind of experience in Paris that made us less appreciative of its beauty. Like getting our iPhone grabbed from your hand on the street, followed by a running chase, followed by a police chase, for instance. (The police chase was actually kinda cool.) But we have kept coming back and always gave the city of lights another chance. 

Coming from Prague, the sheer size of Paris can get overwhelming: a single week is not enough to even begin to understand how big the city is and how different the districts are. Throughout our visits, we have noticed a shift. At the beginning, we saw parallels between Paris and Vienna: the Belle Epoque charm, the monumental palaces and so on. During our later visits, and as we gravitated towards Marais as our district of choice, we have started to see similarities to Berlin: bright New Balance sneakers, fixie bikes, baristas that look like ZZ Top roadies and Australian university drop-outs. Yes, Paris has turned hipster. And we kinda like that. 


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Fun recent Prague openings: gelato, coffee and cocktails!

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Fun recent Prague openings: gelato, coffee and cocktails!

As we like to say, research is the hardest part of our job. We have to visit new places when they open to see if we can recommend them or whether they are so good that we can actually steer our Prague food tours in an entirely new directions. Yes, we know, a truly horrible plight, but somebody has to do it. Now, to give you the fruit of our pain and suffering, we will - from time to time - post short notes on the places we have visited recently. These will be our opinions based on only one or two visits of fairly recently opened venues so they cannot be seen as full-fledged reviews. That said, let's start with three today.


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Where to watch ice-hockey championships in Prague?

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Where to watch ice-hockey championships in Prague?

OK, let’s face it. The Ice-Hockey World Championships are really a Tier II championship. It’s a tournament of the best ice-hockey players who play for teams that got kicked out of the Stanley Cup playoffs already. Also, early and mid May is not the time of the year you would associate with ice-hockey - or ice for that matter - but let’s not worry about that. The hockey is still good and the Czechs love the tournament, and this year it is held in Prague and Ostrava, Czech Republic! 

Where should you watch the games? How should you behave? What to look for? Where to eat? Read on.


Romantic Prague: Kissing in the Petrin park on May 1

Romantic Prague: Kissing in the Petrin park on May 1

The first of May is a very special day in the Czech calendar. You can be sure that certain things will simply happen on the first May day. The Communists will have a rally, again. The few Neo-Nazis and Anarchists we have will try to beat each other somewhere (although that is sooo 90s). And couples in Prague will kiss each other under the blossoming Cherry or Cherry Blossom trees in the Petrin park.


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Prague local favorites: Lokal Hamburk

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Prague local favorites: Lokal Hamburk

When Jan was small, he and his father used to visit the old Hamburk pub for Sunday lunches. It was not a beautiful place back then but then again, no pubs looked really that great in the 1980s under Communist rule. But Jan loved the maritime styling of the pub (referring, along with the pub’s name, to the fact that there was a river port with a direct connection to Hamburg nearby), with a big ship’s wheel under the ceiling as the main light in the room. It was a classic neighborhood pub with “regulars” hanging around the bar. A classic local pub of the Karlin district, a district with a “black soul”, the only “bad neighborhood” in town, a blue-collar worker, industrial neighborhood and a place when Jan’s father used to live.


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