Sunday 11th May 2008

This could probably be described as the most exhausting day of the trip! We booked a 4 hour walking tour around Prague but it basically lasted for over 5 hours and then we had the long walk home! This tour was really good and definitely recommended. Our tour guide Martin, was brilliant and very knowledgeable. He was actually the same guide we had for the pub tour the night before, but was in more of a historic mode than drinking mode as he had been when we last saw him! The tour covers Prague Old Town, the Jewish Quarter and the Castle and Cathedral.

This time we did go into the Cathedral and it's an amazing building. We spent quite a lot of time in there as the various historic pictures, monuments, doors and so on were explained to us.

When we got back to our hotel we realised we only had about half an hour before we were due to be picked up for the Czech Folk Night we had booked (don't ask?!). So it was a quick shower and change then we were on our way.

We were a bit suspicious on the coach that we seemed to be the only people under the age of 50 and we we got there we realised that it's probably a night more suited to older people. But saying that we didn't stop laughing all night because the whole thing was so hilarious, and we even bought the DVD, probably to convince ourselves afterwards that the night had really happened! We were seated with a group of people from Austria, Norway and Thailand, and they didn't seem to speak much English.

The food was really disgusting and a good piece of advice is to say you are vegetarian as at least you get some mushroom soup and a cheese omlet. The standard meal was a plate of mushy looking potato with bits of ham in it to start and then a "selection of meats" with some potato dumplings and vegetables. Supposed to be Slovakian apparently.

Then the entertainment started up which was a band playing instruments dressed in traditional folk costumes, and there was also some singing and dancing by people in costume including someone dressed as a horse. But the most unusual part of the night was the way the wine was poured. Basically a man came round with red and white wine attached to him in containers and squirted it into our glasses from what looked like it was out of his fingers but was our of some special wine shooting machine. We had to admit he had a good aim as was filling glasses from across the table.

The Czech Folk night cost us 2700 CZK (about £90 for 2 people). To be honest I wouldn't say it was worth this much money but it was certainly a laugh.