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.