- gehry's 'fred and ginger' building.
- visit kafka's grave. it's in a beaautiful cemetary.
- space out in english bookstores with some cheap lattes. 'shakespeare and sons' is great.
- some absinthe.

Stand outside the Astronomical Clock when it strikes the hour.

Walk along the Charles Bridge and listen to live performers and buy a cheap painting.

Walk over to Olde Town and see where Kafka used to live.

Walk back over the bridge at night and take photos of the lights on the castles.

(Unfortunetly you have to pay to go into the Kafka house and the security guard guys inside Gehry's dancing house won't let you explore inside... unless you go into the cafe which isn't that cool)

go to adolf loos's muller house. take a leaflet of touristic attractions when you get off the train station, the directions are there and you can get to it by public transport. be sure to call [again, in the leaflet] before as they sometimes require reservations [i think they like to form groups of people so everybody goes around a guided tour, they don't like people wandering around by themselves since it's just restored a few years ago].

-U Fleku...a pub founded in 1499

-Church of the Sacred Heart by Jozef Plecnik

-Hotel Josef by Eva Jiricna (2002) www.hoteljosef.com

little dancing green fairies and all the societ era architecture you can stand

you can eat like a king on a bohemian budget

pivo!!!

And the restaurant atop the Fred and Ginger bldg is surprisingly cheap.... and they have pivo!!!

I'd put Plecnik on the top of my priority list!

Definitely the Sacred Heart church, it's freaking purple and so odd and wonderful.



His interventions at the Castle are amazing and extensive, some very obvious, like this:



while some just pop up in little bits as you wander the palace grounds.

Check out the gardens at the Castle for sure, lots of Plecnik craziness there, like this gate.





And Loos' Villa Muller too, but really only if you can get inside.

if you are interested in seeing a church with an interior made from real human skeletons i think this is definitely worth checking out... i haven't seen it myself but would have loved to... also, it will give you a chance to visit more of the czech republic outside of prague...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_ossuary

but, while you are in prague, at the end of one of the subway lines... can't remember which there is a most impressive relic of the communist times: a communist block housing project that is bigger and more redundant than anything i had ever seen before... it is as far as you can see and it is amazing to see how people have adapted and codified these buildings, while making them their own... these grey facades were attacked with boundless creativity and i was just dumbfounded to see such display of conformity (by allowing these and living in them) and rebellion (the varieties of paint, graphiti etc) all at once... the project is fantastic in its scale, i believe it houses about 60% (if not more!) of the population of prague.

the first suggestion is in the spirit of halloween. the second is about utopia implemented... maybe they are both, really, about similar things...
please do report on your findings...and walk over the charles bridge and all those wonderful steps up to the park where you can see the panorama of the whole city... at least once, its worth every exhausting step!

i miss prague!
ciao prague!
ps: when i was there, in '96, pivo was cheaper than voda... believe it or not!

the girls

the Loos Mueller House (inside especially), Plecnik's Sacred Hearts Church (go up in ramped clock tower and crypt as well) and his Castle interventions (landscape/stair/etc) and the huge (Intl. Style) Trade Fair Building (what Corb said he wished he'd done at the time), Czech Cubism stuff, plus all the amazing vaulted passageways and courtyards are tops -- great city to walk around too

Peklo ("hell" in Czech): Amazing underground restaurant, pricey but well worth the experience.

Club Architektu: Another underground restaurant, more affordable. Bizarre architecture motif. Try the Duta Hlava ("Empty Head") for dessert.

I wouldn't recommend U Fleku. Very touristy, and the food sucks.

Pass on the Pilsner Urquell and go for the good stuff - Budvar (the original)!

Riding the subway is a great way of getting to know the city, esp. in ref. to its Communist roots. The station designs are amazing. I think Nouvel recently finished a building at the Andel stop.

If you can swing a side trip to Brno, definitely check out the Villa Tugendhat by Mies.

Please go see this amazing tunnel leading to the castle. Take lots of pictures and see if you can find us some detail drawings of the brick work (manuf. by Wienerberger AG). Let me know if you actually find this place.

You can take a boat tour on the river, just cruise the river for an hour or so, sitting on the deck of the boat and see what you can see.
Go shopping if you are into that, very inexpensive goods, especially crystal, glass beads, leather clothing etc.

Prague is also known for jazz, I stumbled into a basement venue with great live jazz in a classy atmosphere and cheap drinks. Very cheap actually, if in US would have spent $80 or more, Prague - maybe $10. The improv jazz was incredible, the best I have heard.

Also, spring for good restuarants, gourment stuff, you will never get sushi at a 5 star restuarant for like $8 anywhere else.

Try meeting some locals, they are very nice and speak great english.

(This is all assuming Prague is still as inexpensive as it was when I was there in 2000.)