CZECH OUT PRAGUE!
The historic city is a surprise (and cheap) hit for grown-ups and teenagers alike
PARENTS who take their teenagers on holiday live in dread of the words ‘I’m bored’ or ‘There’s no Wi-fi!’. And a city break, in particular, is asking for trouble — but the more we looked at Prague, the more we realised it might just work.
For one thing, Lily, 18, and Clio, 15, always wanted to see where their favourite movie Amadeus had been filmed.
Plus, as the girls are vegan, we needed a city that embraces plant-based cooking — and Prague has some of the best in the world.
Then, there was the wonderful discovery that a family room at a boutique hotel would cost £725 for six nights, a quarter of the price of other city-break hotspots.
On the first morning, we walked to the main town square, five minutes from our hotel. It was like stepping into a Gothic fairy tale. On one side was the church whose spires inspired Walt Disney’s castle; on the other was the Old Town Hall, which still has the world’s oldest astronomical clock, dating back to the 15th century.
When it struck the hour, the curtains in the two top windows opened up to show the 12 apostles parading past to look down disapprovingly on the vices below.
The objects of their perennial disapproval are Vanity (a man looking in a mirror), Greed ( another holding a bag of gold) and Depravity (a pagan playing a lute).
However, we got a reminder the apostles’ dirty looks hadn’t done much good because shortly after a group of lads on a stag party staggered past carrying a sex doll.
Prague, which sadly is back on the Government’s red list at the moment, hits peak weirdness on Charles Bridge, a 10m wide crossing over the Vitava River connecting the Old and New Towns (but as one was founded in the 12th, and the other in the 13th century, there’s not much in it.)
It’s lined with towering black statues of angels and saints which silhouette against the sunlight and look like Batpeople, though the jewellery vendors, caricaturists and jazz buskers between them offer some light relief.
THERE’S something to see in every direction, whether it’s decorative details high up on the buildings, like the mosaic knights or golden lions, which the girls loved capturing on their iPhones.
Then every so often, you’re brought back down to earth by the red trams which cross-cross the city and the brutalist memorials to Nazi occupation and the 41 years which followed when the country was part of the Communist bloc.
When we hired a guide for the afternoon, she told us this helped explain the city’s love of vegan food. After years in which only stateapproved cookbooks were allowed and all restaurants had to prepare the same meat and potato stews, they celebrated freedom in 1989 by creating a new cuisine using herbs and vegetables not available before.
The resulting choice of plantbased restaurants allowed us to bounce easily between vegan bistros, waffle houses and cafes.
We were also guided by the girls’ interest in music. Mozart didn’t come from Prague, but he’s still claimed as the city’s own because his operas got a better reception here than anywhere else.
Concerts of his greatest hits are performed everywhere here. So we bought tickets to a recital at St Giles Church, the place where they filmed Wolfgang’s marriage to Constanze in Amadeus.
Small museums, which take just an hour to visit, are dotted around the city. So we spent afternoons at shrines to two of Prague’s most famous sons.
The first was graphic artist Alphonse Mucha, whose 6 ft high posters of exquisite women with elaborate hair, kick- started the Art Nouveau movement.
Then we headed to an ornate, ochre-coloured house devoted to composer Antonin Dvorak, where we peered at his little round spectacles, calling card and viola.
On our last day, we meant to hire one of the paddle boats in which you can ride up and down the river.
But when it started raining, we headed to a riverside bar instead, where coffee was served from a caravan underneath tree branches draped with fairy lights.
There, we sheltered in one of the tepees. It was a moment which, for me, summed up how well Prague bridges any generation gap.