Learning to love Prague

What with the crowds of tourists, mass of souvernir tat, pouring rain, extortionate charges to get into churches and fairly obnoxious German boys sharing our dorm, I didn't exactly love Prague at first sight. In fact it took a lovely sunny weekend exploring the castle side of the river to change my mind. I can now admit that it is one of the most beautiful cities we've been to, although I still think it is a place deeply scarred by too much tourism. We have heard far more English voices than Czech, and the extent to which Czech culture is trivialised in order to sell it to tourists is quite disgusting. I think Kafka is spinning in his grave at the sight of a grinning cartoon of him on t-shirts.....

On Saturday we crossed Charles Bridge, walked around the castle courtyards and went on to have a lovely walk around the monastery on the top of the hill and in the surrounding parks, wandering through orchards of apple blossom and taking in the breath-taking views. In the evening, we managed to get deliciously cheap tickets to see a Smetana opera at the National Theatre (only 3 pounds for a fabulous view high up in the gods). It was an opera we had never heard of before called "The Secret" which had some beautiful music, especially the overture and a stunning duet between the two young lovers which just kept soaring upwards. The plot however was distinctly dodgy and Sarah and I got very confused as to why strange dancers wearing green sequinned outfits were gyrating in the background throughout. After the opera we popped next door to an Art Deco cafe to have a quick Martini (oh dear, we are getting increasingly pretentious as this trip goes on...) and then walked back along the river all lit up at night back to the main square. We meant to go straight to bed, but we admitted to each other that we were starving, and so bought hunks of pork from a great haunch being roasted on a spit and ate them with our fingers. Glorious but greasy.

On Sunday morning we went to the 11am Mass at St Vitus Cathedral which is inside the castle complex. This is a stunning Gothic building which took nearly 600 years to complete and is fascinating because of all the different styles which the series of architects used over the centuries. The tower, for example, has a Gothic tower, with a Renaissance parapet topped with Baroque carving. Inside are a series of amazing stained glass windows, one of which is designed by Mucha, the Czech Art Nouveau pioneer - an exhibition of whose work we saw in Budapest. He contributed the window as a mark of his fervent Czech patriotism, for which he was to suffer later under the Nazi regime. It's also got a shrine to St Wenceslas in one of the side chapels, which is richly decorated with precious stones. The music at Mass was underwhelming to say the least in a city so associated with classical music as Prague, but perhaps it was because it was the Sunday after Easter. Afterwards we walked through the castle gardens to a beer garden for a cooling pint of Pilsner, which we hadn't tried yet, and then it was time to head back to the hostel to finish off all the food we had left in the fridge in a rather eclectic lunch of beans on toast, cheese, iceburg lettuce and pears.

And now we're about to catch a train to Liberec in the north of the Czech Republic. I'm glad we were able to see a more attractive side of Prague before we left, but visiting here has given us both a bit of a jolt as we realise that the very tourist industry that has enabled us to do this trip can have such a destructive effect on one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I really hope that Budapest doesn't go the same way as Prague, as it felt like a much more genuine city and not full of quite so many drunken stag parties. It'll be good to get off the tourist trail and plunge into the villages and provincial towns, as we go on to find out more about Sarah's family, this time the Czech side rather than the Slovak.