Prague... a Christmas Fairy Tale

This year we decided not to spend Christmas in Bologna, but in a different city, and so instead of sitting at the table at home we found ourselves on a boat trip on the Vltava. We chose not to move from one sofa to another in the living rooms of our various relatives, but to travel far and wide through the streets and squares of Prague. On the days when everything at home is closed, we indulged in buying gifts both for ourselves and for relatives and friends. In Prague, in fact, the real Christmas celebration is on 24 December; on that day everything stops, whereas from the 25th the museums, palaces and churches are all open. We arrived on the afternoon of the 24th on a flight from Bologna with Czech Airlines, and with a car booked for 33 euros, all 6 of us reached the hotel.

We chose the hotel on the outskirts to save money, but very convenient because it is near the metro stop and many tram lines, all connected to the centre. Our arrival couldn't have been better! Once we reached the old town centre, the lights, the decorations and the festive atmosphere took us straight into the fairy tale of Christmas, with the soundtrack of the concert being held in the square, from 9 to 10 pm. On the 25th, after a tour of the old town with the obligatory stops of the astronomical clock striking the hour, the Tyn Church, the Powder Tower and the surrounding little streets, we boarded the boat that took us along the Vltava.

So instead of a plate of steaming tortellini we found a buffet of traditional Czech Christmas dishes, and the most famous one, which according to everyone was also the best, is the fried carp! A delicacy! Just think that for a two-hour tour with buffet lunch and music, the cost was 28 euros per adult (for a Christmas lunch....). We spent the afternoon in the area of the Jewish ghetto among synagogues and buildings, and here too the fairy tale, or rather the legend, took over and carried us into a seventeenth-century Prague which, together with our city, Bologna, was at that time considered the capital of magic and alchemy.

In the unmissable tour of the old Jewish cemetery everything seems suspended in time, the atmosphere is unreal, and if you focus on the incomprehensible inscriptions or on the drawings and symbols carved on the tombstones, the suggestion grows and you expect at any moment that the GOLEM, the legendary creature born of clay at the hands of Rabbi Lowe and his disciples, is still there to watch over and protect the souls of the ghetto. Continuing our tour we walked the streets of the centre, entering the many souvenir shops, and reached the tower through which you access Charles Bridge. We could not, however, fully enjoy the bridge and its sculptural groups because it was under renovation and thus half covered by scaffolding, and perhaps for this reason the artists were also missing, who according to everyone populate it during the day.

In the evening, wandering among the markets of the centre, we had dinner tasting the various Christmas specialities offered by the stalls, first of all a kind of "bracelet" of sweet dough, wrapped around a metal rod and cooked over embers. We don't know its name, but we do know the taste! We devoted St Stephen's Day to visiting the castle, which is not just a palace but a hamlet in its own right. By tram we arrive beyond the castle entrance, at the Strahov Monastery, and from there towards the square and the borough outside the walls and then to the first of the three Castle gates, just in time for noon, to watch the changing of the guard. We visit the splendid St Vitus Cathedral, itself a symbol of Prague, the Powder Tower, the picture gallery and the Romanesque church of St George.

Then on towards the characteristic Golden Lane, and here you return to a fairy-tale dimension, with tiny little houses, just the right size for gnomes, pastel colours and very narrow little streets... and to think that Kafka also lived here at no. 22! Before leaving the Castle we visit the tower with the prisons and the torture chambers still full of infernal instruments. We end the day with a tour of Mala Strana along Nerudova Street in search of the signs above the doorways, which once, in the absence of street numbers, served to identify the houses. The last day we devote to leisurely wandering among the centre, the squares and the shopping streets, and we don't even miss a stop in the Art Nouveau café, with gold and crystal chandeliers and waiters in white jackets, and then.....back to reality!!!