A shortish ride today in to Prague, still following the Elbe / Labe.  I’m staying in an AirB&B just up from the main station.  It's a nice area even though it's close to the station, and just beyond it gets even nicer.  I like AirB&B for lodging because usually it’s self check in and I can get the bike in to the place without any bother or pleading.  My plan - well such as it is -  is to go back to UK somehow from Prague.  Some plan !  I have thought about train and some cycling, but the train at this time of year proves problematic with the bike because half of Europe is on the move with bicycles and getting a reservation for the bike is proving difficult.  Cycling, well, it’s a long way back home, and anyway the majority of it I have already done several times over the years.  So, I’ve found a flight, and I’ve found a bike box from some very amenable chaps at a Prague bike shop, whom I rewarded handsomely with cream cakes as a thank you, and I am spending a few days here and then will head back home via EuroWings to Birmingham on a direct flight.

The Airbnb apartment is very nice, very quiet.  It's in an old palazzo and I think where there would originally have been a very nice large single apartment, there are now four or five airbnb places.  It looks like the sort of place where bourgeoise Prague-ians would have lived before the arrival of the Germans and then the Communists.

Prague is, of course, a city of history and monuments, and is lovely.  But busy with tourists, including the male and female hen parties it is famous for.  Where I am staying is much quieter, and I’ve discovered some lovely places for eating, especially U Parlament which is a Czech restaurant serving traditional food but with a bit of a hip cool vibe to it.  It has been lovely.  Featuring massively in Czech cuisine are dumplings of various types, some heavy with potato and flour, others lighter.  Even as puddings. I think every Czech is brought up with Mummy's dumplings as a staple.  Beer, of course, Pilsner type, is the drink of Prague, but they do have some nice Czech wines which I tasted.  All in all, Prague is a nice place, busy, young, historic and with some tasty food.

The one site I did come across that I found very engaging was the church where the Czech partisans who assassinated that awful beast of a man Heydrich, the Butcher of Prague, in 1943 in Operation Anthropoid, were holed up in the crypt and were flushed out by flooding by the Germans.  Thousands of Czechs were murdered in the retribution afterwards, including the complete destruction of some small towns / villages.  The name that comes to mind is Lidice.  Heydrich was an arrogant, nasty, cruel man.  He deserved a slow and lingering death from his infected wounds which had been contaminated by horse hair from the car seat in which he was travelling at the time when the car was attacked with bombs and bullets.  Putin, Assad et al, take note.  Some people don’t deserve to die peacefully and quietly in their own beds.

Accommodation: - Nights of 23rd / 24th / 25th June - Airbnb Modern Apartment Angelo Roma Prague