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12 things you should know before visiting Prague

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12 things you should know before visiting Prague

If you ask us, vacations start once you book the flights, and the joys of research start right away. Problem: today, you can Google pretty much everything, and information seem to contradict each other. Case in point: have you tried to google child vaccination? Yeah, exactly. The link you click the first will set you on a path through a rabbit hole, and you’ll end up no smarter after two weeks of research. Solution: you’re joking, right? When it comes to Prague research, we’re the solution. The following should set you on your path through the right rabbit hole. Oh, we mean Prague trip research. 

Here’s the twelve things you should know before you travel to Prague. 


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Five Faves: Prague tips by locals - Marcela Vuong

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Five Faves: Prague tips by locals - Marcela Vuong

If you want to see the Sapa market, you want to see it with Marcela - project manager by day, Vietnamese food tour guide by… ehhhh… day, too (but mostly on weekends). Warm, friendly and passionate about food, she is the perfect companion to what at the beginning might seem like an impenetrable maze of warehouses and hole-in-a-wall pho places. (Did we mention she’s beautiful, too?) Heck, she gave us her own tips when we wrote about the market, and they have never failed us on our own visits.

Born in Vietnam yet raised in the Bohemian town of Chomutov (“No-one comes from there,” she claims incorrectly, not knowing that Zuzi was in fact raised there, too.), she has a unique insight into both Vietnamese and Czech food and culture, and isn’t afraid to share it. What started as cooking Vietnamese dishes for her friends (and she has many, often recruited from young fashion and design circles) eventually snowballed into one of the most popular tours to Sapa. She also seems to be travelling all the time, which we often observe on social media with thinly disguised envy. So yes, we like her, and we think you’d like her too. Here’s her five faves for Prague and social media.


Best Breakfast in Prague

Best Breakfast in Prague

We don’t know about you, but we think breakfast can make or break a day, especially when you’re on vacation. We looove us some breakfast, and we wrote about breakfast in Prague extensively before. If there is a better way to start the day in Prague than just relax, let it all hang out, have a scrumptuous breakfast (booze optional but recommended) and prepare for what the day has to offer, we’d like to know. (Well sure, our Prague food tours are obviously the best way to start the day, but that’s just a shameless plug. Sorry, you gotta do whatcha gotta do.)

Before we get to specific recommendations and tips, a few things you should know about breakfast in Prague in general. First, if you’re planning to eat breakfast at a popular venue, make sure you have a reservation. We’re not saying Prague is the Portland of Central Europe, but the fact is that the lines can get crazy long. Want proof? Just have a look at the cold, blank stares of the people who have waited in vain for two hours to get a table at Café Savoy on a Sunday morning. 

Second, don’t expect to be wowed by creativity when it comes to breakfast in Prague. Sure, things have been getting better but cutting edge breakfast and playful dishes are strill rare and far apart. What you should expect instead is lots of eggs and comfort cooking, which is fantastic in the winter, or as a hangover cure. In the summer, things have been getting better on the “healthy lifestyle” front, with more options if you actually like quinoa and cold-fermented porridge. Also, brunch cocktails are still in their infancy here in Prague, but that should not deter you from ordering booze for brunch. Hey, you’re on vacation and you deserve it.

Finally, coffee in Prague is seriously and surprisingly good, and while not every place that serves great breakfast serves great coffee, and vice versa, the overlap of the two has been growing steadily in the past few years. Therefore, if you think breakfast is incomplete without a cup of great coffee (and we totally feel you), Prague will treat you well. 

Below are our favorite breakfast spots in Prague.


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Prague food scene in 2017 - a year in review

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Prague food scene in 2017 - a year in review

Oh, what a year 2017 was. What started rather slowly has become, both for us personally and for Prague’s food scene in general, a year of excitement and hope. Here’s the year 2017 in review, as it relates to the Prague food scene.

(And yes, we did not know what picture to post as the title photo, so we put a pic from Maso a Kobliha with JJ's first hand modeling assignment.)


It's a boy! (Oh, and we're alive, too.)

It's a boy! (Oh, and we're alive, too.)

This post is really one long apology. 

You see, if you’ve been reading this blog for some time, you may have noticed that the frequency of our blog posts has decreased in the past years. Well, „decreased“ is a nice way of putting it. We hardly posted anything this year. We’re sorry. We did not die, or split up, or go on a hunger strike. But there’s a reason for the silence, and a change is coming.


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Best ice-cream in Prague

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Best ice-cream in Prague

Summers in Prague can be excruciating. Especially in the past few years, as Czechia (yup, we’re using the new abbreviated name for the Czech Republic) has been getting more tropical weather from the South. As temperatures reach 30C/85F, the cobblestoned streets heat up, and air-conditioning is hard to find in the Unesco-protected historical centre. Your answer? Ice-cream. In your face, climate change!

But where to go for great ice-cream in Prague? We’ve gathered a few of our favorite ice-cream parlors and a few ice-cream purveyors you should look out for. And a few bonus tips on how to stay cool in summer Prague. Here’s a list of what we think is the best ice-cream in Prague.


Cool drinks in cool places in Prague

Cool drinks in cool places in Prague

Visitors come to Prague not suspecting how much walking they will do: the centre is very compact and it just makes sense to walk everywhere. But boy oh boy, when it gets hot during the Prague summer months, a day of sightseeing can get pretty exhausting. That’s when it is very important to hydrate. And does a splash of alcohol in your drink really hurt? No, we don’t think so either. Recently, a group of Australians who joined our Prague food tour spent the next afternoon in a wine bar opening seven (not a typo, seven) bottle of wine. I think they made more memories - and friends - they ever would walking the city. So really, in a way, this post is not about cool drinks in Prague. Let’s think of it as a post about making cool friends in Prague. (Yes, it is important to rationalise your day drinking on vacation, and we are happy to help.)


Best beef steak tartare in Prague

Best beef steak tartare in Prague

Ahhh, the joys of devouring a good steak tartare! One of the most feared - and later one of the most loved - dishes we order in the course of our Prague Food and Culture Tours, beef steak tartare is one of the most popular dishes eaten in Czech pubs and arguably the king of a specifically Czech category of foods found in many Prague restaurants: “snacks that go well with beer”. Forget about the naysayers and fear mongers. You should give it a try in Prague. Where and how? Read on.


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The best Prague cafes (2017 edition)

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The best Prague cafes (2017 edition)

The cafes in Prague are great, and the specialty coffee they serve is seriously good. It's easy to forget that or take it for granted. But when we travel, one of the things we miss the most about Prague is coffee. It's really that good.

It hasn't always been the case. Five yeas ago Zuzi came back from the specialty coffee workshop and the number of coffee shops we could visit shrunk to about two or three, much to Jan's dismay. Now when a new cafe opens, it is more likely to have good rather than bad coffee. Sure, they rarely bring anything very new or different to the table, but they are usually good. And it's not only about the "centre" anymore. None of the residential districts that surround it are actually lacking in the specialty coffee department. 

So what makes the cafes in Prague so special? Passion. Specialty coffee seems to be a viable career in Prague, and the baristas of Prague's best coffee shops seem to genuinely like what they do. Most of the coffee shops are  independently owned and can source their coffee from wherever they wish. Prague's leading specialty coffee roaster has set the prices of coffee fairly low, which means you get great bang for your buck. And at the coffee scene's core lies a community of baristas who know and continue pushing each other. And you generally don't get any attitude or scolding when you want sugar in your coffee. 

It's time to reap the benefits. Here's the best cafes in Prague, according to us.


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Farmers markets in Prague: Where to go and what to taste

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Farmers markets in Prague: Where to go and what to taste

Prague farmers markets are, without a doubt, one of the best things to do in Prague. As a Prague attraction, they are authentic, genuine and popular among the locals. Prague markets are on throughout the year, most typically on Saturday mornings, with an ever-shorter pause in January and February. Visiting Prague farmers markets is a great idea for so many reasons, but primarily, they nicely show what is in season at the particular time of the year and what you should expect - and demand - on the menu in the best restaurants in Prague. We have picked the four best farmers markets in Prague we think are worth visiting. You can find more farmers markets in Prague, but we visit these four the most.


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