Jewish Quarter

Prague Old Jewish Quarter

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• published: 08 Jun 2013
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5/19 Sunday Today, we're visiting the Historic Jewish Quarter of the city, where there are several synagogues and a cemetery. We also stop at a 13th century convent of St. Agnes, once nearly demolished but now carefully restored. The quiet, empty, early gothic church is calming and serene. We walk along with the tour groups to the synagogues, but not to go inside with the crowds. We find ourselves in a Rodeo Drive shopping district, high-priced designer shops and swanky restaurants. We walk back to a district close to our neighborhood to meet our next host, Linda, who is renting her apartment to us for the week. She's a very nice young woman. The place very clean, quiet and cozy, just what we're looking for. She gives us a tour and the keys so we can come in tomorrow any time. We head back to the hotel over a hill along a big city park, where we come upon a Sunday party -- a reggae band playing at a snack stand, with picnic tables filled with locals, families, children and dogs, people laying about on the grass, sky-high stacks of empty beer cups and full ashtrays. Perfection. We grab a couple of beers and watch the sun lower over the city in the distance while we enjoy the gritty ambiance. People around us are smoking and drinking like maniacs while the dogs bounce around and the children dance themselves into hysterical exhaustion. A massive black wall of clouds moves in, an impending thunderstorm that sends most of the crowd home, done for the day. We move into the snack pub with about forty other smokey locals. The bartender is a young woman with a shaved head, arty eyewear and a flowy maxidress. Bob gives her a dollar tip for our two dollar beer tab, and they push the money back and forth for a while, she's thinking he's overpaying because he doesn't understand the currency, he's trying to give her a dollar tip. We wait out the rain with Bob playing a few lively foosball games with a couple of guys from the band with dreads to the waist, then walk through the wet park to our hotel. We stop for a late dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant, beautiful clear soup and crispy whole fish and a bottle of wine for no good reason. For more video and travel tales, follow our blog at http://bpeurope2013.blogspot.com/.