Czech Please

We're back in Prague where I had work to do this week. We arrived on Tuesday by train from Bratislava where we spent two nights after the week in Paris. Audit work is not for the weary.

It was cold, rainy, and altogether unpleasant throughout the week, so we didn't venture too far from out hotel in the evenings. Cafe Imperial was recommended by our hotel and was good. It had classic charm to it, with a mosaic tiled ceiling. We also enjoyed Pravda, which is located right next to the Old New Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter. They do classic Czech cuisine, but in an updated way. The chocolate fondant for dessert was perfectly cooked, with the center oozing liquid chocolate, just as Jenn likes it.

Once the work week ended, Jenn and I ventured out into the rain on Friday night and had dinner at Monarch, a wine restaurant. We each had a glass of Czech wine because we felt like more than that would put us to sleep. The wine complimented the mozzarella and tomato foam salad, beef carpaccio, and cheese plate. Everything was tasty. It was a perfect meal to end the week.

Instead of going to sleep and getting some rest, which we probably should have done, we took in a late showing of The Social Network at the movie theater not far from our hotel. We both really enjoyed it. I'm not on Facebook, but was really interested in the movie from a business perspective. I've been told that the movie takes a lot of liberties with the story of how the company and site were born, but regardless, as a movie, it worked really well. I'd be interested to read Ben Mezrich's book, The Accidental Billionaires, on which the movie was based. There were a lot things the movie made me think about, but mostly that the site became so successful because of exclusivity and being cool. Now that almost everyone is on it, including parents, grandparents, teachers, bosses, and anyone else you can think of that you wouldn't want looking in on your personal life, is it still cool to be on Facebook? And if not, how much longer will it last? I personally think privacy and not posting status reports every time one changes their child's diaper is cool, but that's for another blog posting.

My sister, Rachel, arrived this morning and met us at the hotel. We switched hotels to be closer to the city center. The Moods hotel is modern and very simple. It's a tight squeeze for the third bed for Rach, but it's only for one night. This is us before bed this evening. Rachel had already crashed. Please note that we did not call up someone from the hotel to take this picture. The camera was on automatic.

We are big believers in hitting the ground running after traveling and not stopping to nap or rest. We find that it is much better for the jet lag. Rachel arrived after breakfast. We stopped for coffee (for her) and hot chocolate (for us) at the Praha Bakeshop. We discovered it on our last trip with my parents and now we can't get enough of it.

We joined a free walking tour that took us around the city center, showing us the highlights, and giving some of the history. I know it was free and you can't ask for much, but the tour guide was kind of an asshole. It was almost like he was on an ego trip about having 40 or so tourists following him around and listening to his every word. He was very rude and patronizing to the entire group. This wasn't our biggest problem. He was way too casual in the way he hit on certain parts of the history of the city that are more serious. I'm not sure if he didn't know what he was talking about, was trying to be funny, or, as mentioned above, really is an asshole. The perfect example of what I'm talking about here is when we were in the Jewish Quarter and he explained that the Jews had "a pretty hard time" in Word War 2. Jenn actually said something to him about it after the tour, so hopefully he took it to heart.

We walked with Rachel across the Charles Bridge, past the John Lennon peace wall, and had a nice lunch at a Thai place called Noi. We then walked up to the castle, stopped in a pub for some good and very cheap beer, and then headed back to the hotel for a break. We lost Rach at this point, but we knew she needed to get some sleep. Jenn and I headed off to dinner. It was very cold, so we didn't want to venture far, and found a pizza place, that wasn't bad.

I was skeptical when Rachel made her plans to come here and was only giving herself two days in Prague, but it looks like that will turn out to be plenty of time as we saw most everything today already. We'll head back to Bratislava on the train tomorrow afternoon.