Prague and Karlovy Vary, January 2017
There are several bus routes from the airport towards the city, and further on the subway.
New Year's break is not over yet, there are decorations hanging in the streets. The garlands are calm, usually single-color and match each other, as if the Czechs have a manual for decorations.
The fair at Old Town Square. There are souvenir and food stalls standing around selling trdelnick and hotdogs. In the center is a Christmas tree.
The square is empty in the afternoon and morning, life begins in the evening.
Trees have a crown decoration, not poles :-)
There's an Apple museum downtown. There are old computers and laptops there, and abandoned projects like the Newton or the camera. Fans will love it.
Walking in the city is comfortable. The gutters go under the sidewalk, so water doesn't pour down from the roofs onto your feet. There are crosswalks everywhere, downtown is completely pedestrianized. Sometimes there are long traffic lights, but not many.
Of the sights, I recommend Prague Castle, a castle on the left bank of the Vltava River. It is high up, but you can see the city well from above, you can take pictures.
On the same side of the river stands St. Vitus Cathedral, it has cool stained glass windows.
To get around the city's 58 acres of zoo, set aside a separate day. In the winter, parts of the zoo are closed and the animals are in warm pavilions.
At the national museum on the first floor the exhibits change, we ended up at the film exhibit. Of the exhibits: old posters, tickets and projectors. In a separate room they were spinning a tape on an 80's projector. On the second floor is a historical exhibition: from antiquity to the Middle Ages.
Manholes are cool in the Czech Republic.
It takes 2 hours to get to Karlovy Vary by bus. The intercity buses have wifi. You can get around the city itself in 3 hours. The most interesting thing here is the view from the observation tower “Diana”.
Public transportation in Prague is a buzzkill. A tourist ticket for all city transportation for 3 days costs 310 crowns (900 rubles). It includes subway, bus and streetcar fares.
Streetcars run throughout the city. The course is quiet and the cars are warm—you forget you're on a streetcar. On busy routes it runs in trains of 4 cars.
On narrow streets, the streetcar tracks and the bus tracks overlap. But the bus doesn't shake even when it passes in that spot. Stops overlap, too.
Every streetcar and bus has an electronic map with stops. On it they write the route number, the next stop (in the largest font), the list of next stops. At the edges of the scoreboard are the starting and ending stops.
Of the towers in the city, I suggest climbing the Powder Tower, the Old Town Bridge Tower, and the Prague Chimes.
If you're a fan of trains, go to the Railway Kingdom Museum. There's a model of Prague and a collection of cars and steam locomotives on display.
It's warm there even in early January, the temperature doesn't drop below -5 degrees, so the river doesn't freeze.
