Czech Escape - Part 2

 

This rather grand looking building (above) is the national museum in Prague, it's kind of a mix between the Natural History Museum and British Museum in London having exhibits of both natural and cultural artefacts together in one multi-floor space. We spent a good couple of hours looking around on a rather grey morning, there were many different sections to the museum and an underground passage to another large building next door, you could easily spend a whole day here if you wanted. I was particularly struck by the architecture and also (randomly) the rock collection, both magnificent! Pictured below are the wonderful ceiling in the main reception gallery and also some luminescent rocks!

There were several thing on my "must do" list while visiting Prague, a couple of them were food items and we managed to tick one of them off one lunch time in a little beer garden in the centre of the city (see picture below)

The item in question is Goulash! Proper Eastern European beef stew with paprika and onions, the round things on the left side of the plate are dumplings (not how I remember the little balls floating on top of the stews my mum used to make!) and together form a very traditional Czech dish. It's pretty filling though, if you have goulash and dumplings for lunch then you really don't need much dinner at all, as I found out! Most of the food in Prague was very reasonable, basic but flavoursome and filling, the two meals pictured above with a couple of beers each came to a total of £20, in London the beers on their own would probably approach this total.

Of course I had to sample the craft beer scene in the city and I'm glad to report that it's vibrant and widespread. I sought out a couple of recommended places during the visit and although none of the brewery names were familiar most of the styles were recognisable as were the hop names and adjuncts. Pictured below is a typical beer board for a Czech craft beer bar, a decent selection of pale ales, IPA's and stouts and the prices were pretty good too, nothing much more than £4 for roughly a pint (500ml)

This place was in the centre of town and seemed to be mostly populated by heavy metal fans (tat's and piercings) but they were all friendly enough and very keen to explain their offerings to tourists like us. The other craft'y thing we did was to do a tasting "paddle" in one of the beer places, in the picture below you can see six different beers, all different styles and all very enjoyable, this was around 380 crowns which is roughly £12 (for two paddles of 6 beers) which I reckon was pretty reasonable for the location and the types of beer on offer.

More Prague stuff to come in part 3