Bike Fridays in Prague

This post is for the bike-minded. If you're looking for our ramblings about Prague, skip down. This is about weather, roads, safety, and of course folding bikes.


Pauline rides a red extralight Pocket Rocket Pro Petite with drop bars, Shimano 105, skinny tires, folding rack, Capreo hub. I have a green New World Tourist with single chainring, chunky tires, H-bar, Gripshift, Capreo hub, SPD pedals. Fenders were a must if you're riding to a nice restaurant, but they can interfere with quickfolding.

I thought that bikes in Prague in November/December would be questionable. I had visions of icy cobblestones and smog, but I was glad we had our bikes in the end. Maybe we were lucky, but we got no snow. It rained lightly and often. By the end our bikes were filthy and we needed chain lube real bad. I will have to find an airline-safe version.

There are tourist maps of Prague online. (example) There are also two dedicated cycling websites: this one, the other one. We got a decent free cycling map from the tourist office with numbered bike routes and paths, but is not a good street map. Google maps has excellent satellite coverage of the Czech Republic. None of my GPS routes are very helpful, but you can find some good stuff on Grant Podelco's site, which we will refer to often. In case you have a GPS, you should figure out how to download posted routes from the web and upload them onto your GPS. It's worth it.

Bikeability varies. You can find wide quiet roads, but you'll probably have to ride on a narrow busy road to get there. Intermittent bike routes and bike paths exist, but they don't exactly form a network. Watch out for right turn lanes that get green lights while the straight-on signal is red. The cobblestones and tram tracks can get tiresome, especially with skinny tires. I like the 90psi 32mm Schwalbes.

We heard all kinds of warnings about bike security, but we were surprised when some loser stole Pauline's rack bungee. We each used a bar lock and a cable and took everything off when parked. Our hotel didn't say anything when we brought our bikes inside, but we were careful not to leave tracks on the carpet just in case. You can take your bikes on the metro for free -- space permitting. Use the first or last car. To get down there be ready to carry your bike on stairs and escalators, which I assume is allowed since we got away with it.

Take your Bike Friday everywhere. You never know.

Prague 12/4/2007: our favorite ride with Grant Podelco

Pauline: Before our trip I Googled "Prague best bike routes" and found Grant Podelco's Prague Bike Blog. Grant is an American journalist who has been living in Prague for 12 years and recommends it. He was kind enough to answer email questions before our trip and generous enough to take a day off and drive 45 minutes to meet us for a ride, which turned out to be the highlight of our trip.

Pauline: Note: Calls to mobile phones are very expensive! Two phone calls ended up costing $70! I reconciled it by thinking of how inexpensive the overall trip had been.

Ulandt: The morning looked like this:
This is the view from our hotel over blocky buildings from the Eastern Bloc era. It's another uncertain sun/rain mix in temps in the 40's F. We are getting better at finding our way across town. We meet on the other side of the river near the castle. For the rest of the day we follow Grant. He leads us through the mountain bike park, past the equestrian island, over the river via pedestrian bridge, and past the kayak course. Our destination is the tiny village of Okoř on the plains above the river valley NW of Prague. Grant uses a GPS, and full details of the route are posted on his blog. Unlike Boston, the city of Prague knows its limits, and we enter forest and fields very suddenly. After struggling to find good bikeable roads on our own, it's nice to ride with someone who knows the area. Our route leads NW along the river and then west through forest on muddy bike trails. Fenders are a must. Unfortunately, Grant has a fender malfunction and gets to thoroughly enjoy the mud.

Pauline: My skinny tires managed just fine, surprisingly.

Ulandt: Just for the heck of it, we take the bike ferry, which is part of the metro system.


Grant pointed out this coal pile, which will be shoveled through a basement window to heat this house. He doesn't like the ubiquitous smell of burning coal. This is called "brown coal", but it's black.

Ulandt: I think it's lignite.

Pauline: The ride to the castle was up steep hills through the outskirts of Prague. We reached a high plateau, where the headwind was brutal and the sky was gloomy. The landscape was vast and unvaried, so I just put my head down and gutted it out. Ulandt let me draft off him, which helped a ton. We arrived at the castle. The pleasant creek nearby reminded me of Carcassonne.













Ulandt: The castle is in good shape considering it is 700 years old.



We are greeted by the castle's cats.


Pauline: We lunched at the nearby Okoř Family Restaurant, which is a pretty French-country style place with great food. All three of us ate a big hot lunch, including caffe lattes and beer, for about $30 total.

When we started the ride home, the sun made a glorious appearance, and the high plateau gave us a tailwind! It was like a gift from God. I always expect headwinds to change direction and plague you on your return trip.

Ulandt tries to outrace the rainclouds. Unfortunately, they caught us.



We passed a sign that said this town Tuchoměřice (or the building?) was 700 years old.

Look at how muddy Grant's bike was when we were done! A true mountain-biker's badge of honor. Ulandt had a flat tire from hitting a sharp curb. He fixed it in the comfort of the metro station. Otherwise, he would have loved to let Grant test-ride the bike. We were thoroughly spent. [No actually Ulandt wants to ride some more.] Read Grant's blog posting about our adventure. Thanks, Grant!



It was our last night in Prague, and we still had things to see, plus we had to wash our filthy bikes and pack them. We walked one more time through Prague Castle (lovely and unusual free toilets at St. Vitus' Cathedral), through the Lesser Town below the castle, then went to the Obecni Dum (Municipal House), which is a great example of Art Nouveau architecture. They had a nice restaurant and cafe, and in the basement is a beer hall that Grant recommended. We didn't eat there. We took the subway home to save time. We washed our bikes outside using our handy Pocket Bucket! I love that thing! It helped us do laundry, too!






I loved Prague and wish we had seen more of the art museums. Touring this town requires more preparation than, say, Paris, because the sights are smaller and scattered around, and there aren't that many museums open at night, which is what we usually do when we have jet lag. We were often indecisive about what to do next since there were few all-day attractions. We would have done better with an organized agenda. We'll just have to go back some day!!

Ulandt: I'm not going to mope about the stuff we missed. I think we had a good balance of art, culture and activity. I guess I should have bought the German-made waterproof panniers at the bike shop for $28... One last slightly Photoshopped photo. Sorry if I look a bit scary. I'd been in riding and walking all day in rainy cold wind without my glasses.

Prague 12/3/2007: National Museum, St. Nicholas Church, Rain, Estates Theater Concert

Ulandt: Went to the museum today. Grant Podelco described it as "a bunch of old dusty rocks" or something like that. Basically he's right, but it was actually sort of quaint. The rocks, all of which were chipped down to the same size, were on little pedestals with gold-tooled-letter labels. It was like an antique shop of rock samples. There were dusty old animals and birds too. Not fair. There were modern exhibits of the latest scientific stuff as well, and it was free.(first Monday of each month) I figured Pauline would be bored out of her head, but she liked it fine until she got hungry. The building was probably the highlight for her. It's got a dome, lots of carved stonework, and an atrium with a grand staircase. Invading Germans mistook it for a government building and shot it full of holes, which I'm told you can still see on the outside.

Pauline: These photos of the museum's interior are from pcbarnett.com/WordPress/2006/09/ a blog about an Englishwoman's trip to Prague.

Ulandt: The purpose of a museum visit is to use up a rainy day, but when we left the sun was out. Figures. We walked a bit to the north to the old Jewish quarter.

Pauline: Hitler had many Jewish treasures from Europe sent to Prague in preparation for a museum of an "extinct" race. That freaked me out and chilled me as much as the sudden downpour that sent us into the Hotel Intercontinental.

Ulandt: Oh boy! Pauline finally finds exactly what she's been looking for: a cozy fancy cafe with red velvet curtains, chandeliers and linen napkins.


I guess this is why we come back with an even firmer belief in coffee every time we go to Europe.

Pauline: It's called the Cremeria Milano on Parizska Street (Paris Street-- it really does look like a street out of Paris).

We finally got our act together to get tickets to a concert at the Estates Theater, where Mozart himself premiered "Don Giovanni", conducted the orchestra and played the piano. This theater was used in the film "Amadeus". The picture here is copied from their homepage.

The performer was tenor Stefan Margita, hosting a soprano, baritone, violinist, and harpist, all accompanied by the theater orchestra. They did all the big opera hits, as well as some famous Czech pieces. My favorite was "Song to the Moon" from Dvorak's "Rusalka". It brought tears to my eyes. Overall, I knew that all the music was aimed at tourists (the many chamber concerts taking place each night at the various magnificent churches all had the same repertoire, and it was all music that you hear at your local Au Bon Pain chain); however, I was impressed by the sheer number of concerts and opera performances, and the enthusiastic crowds. I wish Boston had a year-round opera season! The quality of the performance we saw was outstanding. I wonder if the local musicians get bored out of their minds by playing the same things over and over.

If you attend the theater concerts, make sure you dress up (men all wore jackets, some women wore full-length evening gowns). I have bike clothes that can double as dress clothes, but Ulandt felt awkward as the only man without a jacket. You can get cheap standing-room tickets, I believe, judging from the fact that some people were simply leaning on a rail for that purpose. The wine at Intermission was very cheap-- $1.90 per glass, whereas coffee was usually >$3.00.

Prague 12/2/2007: Troja Palace bike roam

Ulandt: I had a new experience today. I had a chocolate bar I couldn't eat. It was so bad I threw some of it away. Beware Eastern bloc chocolate...

There were spots of sun and no rain this morning, so we decided to dress in bike garb and get out of town and enjoy light Sunday traffic. A lot of stuff is closed on Sunday anyway. Pauline is also tired of walking. She hates walking and finds it too slow and painful. We rode north the usual way to the river and took a right on the bike path. We had seen this path before winding along into the tress. Looked good. We passed two canoe/kayak race courses, which were in use by a dozen hardy Czech paddlers. Why don't we have one of those here? We followed the A2 bike path from the north side of town to the east/north along the curve of the river towards Troja. The A2 path gets tangled up with a construction site, and we ended up on the roads. Use the river for a landmark and remember it's shape. We kept taking lefts until we ended up back at the river and path. Czech bike routes are a lot like Boston's. The signs are small, often posted really high, and you can't count on them at every turn. There's a lot of winging it. If nothing else, the free bike path map has the numbers of the paths, which you can hope to match up with the signs you may find. Sunday traffic was very light.

We opted not to go into the Troja Palace. The building itself is on the modern side for our interests -- and it was a nice day. We found out later that it has an excellent art collection.



The grounds are free and worth a roam. Somebody had a sense of humor when they designed this archway for the stables:

From the Palace we spotted an intriguing tiny chapel on a hill covered with vineyards. Naturally we had to ride up there and take a look. This chapel was thought to be haunted. The bell used to ring on its own. It turned out that a small monkey, which had escaped from the nearby zoo, had taken up residence in the bell tower and rang the bell by swinging on the ropes.


Go up the hill from the zoo/palace entrance and bear right. You'll find the outdoor botanical garden with a great view and walking paths. Follow the garden driveway further along to the chapel and a fun bumpy road down.

Also on this hillside is something else really neat, The Fata Morgana greenhouse, which opened in 2004. We didn't come to Prague for a greenhouse, but happened to stumble across it, and it is one of the best in the world. There are several sections, each with a fairly complete tropical ecosystem. You follow a meandering path up and down and even through an underwater tunnel with windows into an aquarium/pond. Unfortunately the bird sounds aren't real, but there are huge butterflies. We didn't take any photos inside. It would have been hard to capture, and humidity is tough on cameras (especially the one we saw at the bottom of the pond).

Back on the bikes and back to town over a lovely long span of footbridge over the river. Why don't we have one of those here? We headed towards Prague Castle through a park where the locals do most of their mountain biking (usually in jeans). South of the park we followed a well-signed bike route on streets to the Letenske park, and then picked up our usual route to the castle complex. The Royal Gardens were closed (and probably never allow bikes) and the street north of the castle is very busy and narrow. You could ride on the sidewalk or between the tram tracks (but watch out!). You're not supposed to ride in the castle comples, but we got away with walking them -- and a little riding, but it's November. Every source warned us that the Czech Republic is not a very warm fuzzy place, but in my opinion it compared favorably to Boston and New York City. Maybe it's because Pauline took the time to learn a few lines and work on the pronovnciationczs. Every once in a while somebody goes out of their way to mess with you, and that gets noticed.

Pauline: Someone stole the bungee cord off my bike rack. I hadn't bothered to "strip" that off of my bike because I thought it was a pathetic thing to steal. But someone took it!

Ulandt: We locked our bikes to the only bike-locking pole anywhere near the road to the castle. The guard in the shack waited until we had everything locked up (2 locks per bike, lights and bags off, helmets stashed), and then he yells at us to move them. Same pole the other day we had no trouble and even rode up to the main gate and inside the courtyards. Hah! We had time to see St Vitus cathedral, which isn't as big as Notre Dame, but has some much better gargoyles. The rest of the buildings were closed. Pile of photos, then I'm done:

Prague 12/1/07: National Theater and Old Town Hall

The National Theater (Narodni Divadlo) is usually open only for performances, but luckily today they were giving FREE guided tours. In Czech! But it didn't matter because the place was fabu. Red velvet, gilt scrolled woodwork, chandeliers. Yum! We don't have theaters this magnificent in America. The curtain has a great painting on it.

























Even the side galleries and lobbies were heavily decorated.
































Later we wandered over to the Old Town Hall, where you can ascend to the viewing deck. A scary Italian guy and his cronies kept crushing up against me; his hand was brushing me and I noticed his sleeve over my fanny pack (yes, I admit to wearing a fanny pack). He kept smiling at me in a friendly way and I kept trying to get away from him, but it was very crowded on the platform. Luckily he didn't get my wallet. Be careful in crowds! Prague is a big pickpocket city.

The views were gorgeous: