If you have seen my latest travel post then you will already know that we took a free walking tour whilst in Prague for a weekend. I thought I would share our experience here and also talk about another tour that we purchased with them too; The Castle Tour.
When we were looking at things to do in the city before we actually went Ben mentioned a walking tour to me and I admit my first reaction was an almighty cringe. It sounded like my worst nightmare. Being dragged about the city at someone elses pace being talked to for hours on end about history and religion and various other subjects that could become dull after the first hour or so.
But one of our friends had done tours like this before when in Prague and various other places and highly recommended them. Although she is a history teacher so would be far more interested in the details than I am, so I was still a little apprehensive but thought if it is free, what have we got to lose really? Ben agreed that if it was terrible we could leave at any point and make our excuses.
We booked in for the 9.30 tour, so an early start for us as we were staying just out of the city on a tram journey away. So much for a lie in when holidaying without the kids! We met outside Cartier by the main square in the old town and then met our guide for the day, Ian. Ian was a Brazilian who had been living in Prague for a number of years and he really did make the tour. He set the pace just right, fast moving, full of interesting facts, nothing too heavy and moving on from subject to subject to keep the interest alive. He was really quite funny (as in humorous) and a really likeable character.
We saw the following parts of the city:
Old Town Square & Astronomical Clock
View of Charles Bridge
House of the Black Madonna & Museum of Cubism
Church of Our Lady before Týn
View of Prague Castle
Rudolfinum – Czech Philharmonic
Old New Synagogue & the Golem
Art Nouveau Municipal House
St. Nicolas’ Church
It was a three hour tour and honestly it absolutely flew by. We really enjoyed it.
The tours are free and you may be wondering how they do this? Well it is expected that you pay them at the end with what you think the tour is worth, so in the form of a tip. Although us stiff upper lipped British may find this a little awkward it really was no problem and we paid exactly what we would have paid elsewhere for a paid trip, and it was well worth it.
We enjoyed it so much that we actually booked on to their Castle tour the following day. This is a tour that you pay for when booking but we did get a small discount because of already being booked on to another of their tours.
I have to be honest and this tour I didn't enjoy so much. Our guide was not like Ian had been the day previous. He was much slower paced, talked about every single thing is the tiniest detail and just didn't manage to keep my attention for very long. I have to say I found it a little frustrating. Just in that I wanted to get on and see more rather than standing around chatting about things that really didn't interest me very much. That may be a little unfair as some of the group really did seem to be interested so it would depend what kind of detail you wanted to go into and the type of personality you warm to. He was a nice guy but the engagement lacked somewhat. He also somehow managed to walk us about a mile up a hill away from the castle at the end to a brewery for no apparent reason, I would much rather him have left us in the areas of the castle so we continue to look around. It was a slightly odd ending and seemed to have no real schedule or plan.
Although part of me does wonder that if we hadn't loved the day before so much and learnt so much about the city that we would have actually found his tour more interesting. I also think that this tour seemed to fall on to a Saturday and so the castle was busy, there was little movement around the grounds because of waiting for other people to move about and we couldn't even get into the cathedral which was disappointing. None of which was our tour guides fault. We didn't have a bad day but it just didn't compare to the day before.
Hayley x
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