Where the Drunk Things Are

I will post about the many incredible castles, churches, and buildings we saw in the Czech Republic later, but it would be remiss of me to not start out this tour of our favorite European stop without talking about the drunken haze in which we wandered through this city. Our itinerary only allowed for one day in most of the cities we visited but since we arrived in Prague (or Praha as the locals call it) on the weekend and everything in Europe is closed on Sundays, we opted an extra day here.

We arrived at our fairly central hotel unexpectedly early thanks to my amazing Map Girl skills (and not at all thanks to blind luck) and immediately set out to find some of the bars we had heard so much about. I will admit here that we were not expecting to like (let alone love) Prague as we had heard so much prior good press and word of mouth that we assumed it was being over hyped. We. Were. Wrong.

We started our Drunken Haze Tour of Prague at a bar Hubby read about that boasted serving the strongest beer in the world. Ever willing to dive into a new mug beer, Hubby was keen to order the 11.8% alcohol content X-Beer at U Medvidku in Old Town Prague. Since I didn’t want to be left behind, I ordered the ice cream version of this surprisingly sweet beer. I’m not sure if I would run out and buy a case of either the beer or the ice cream but it was a fun way to start what would be a great evening.

We wandered around Old Town popping into shops and reading restaurant menus in search of food. I refuse to reveal the identity of the embarrassingly American restaurant we eventually ended up at but what followed is definitely worthy of blogging. While we were waiting for our meals to arrive, I finished one giant Margarita, during the meal I drank another, I think there was a pink thing somewhere in there, and then we decided to have shots.

I’m not a shot girl under the best of circumstances but when we were offered a taste of the local liqueur Becherovka we knew it be impolite to refuse. My first thought was, “This smells like Christmas!” With the gingerbread scent wafting around me, I leaned back and slammed the contents of the small glass. Tasty!

Our livers fared no better on Sunday than they did on Saturday. Between meals and tourist spots, we enjoyed a glass or two of wine and even an absinthe ice cream cone! (Yum!) The highlight of our drunken tour of Prague was Les Moules – a restaurant whose menu features a kilogram of mussels prepared just about any way you’d like. I would tell you how good the mussels were but yummy is too tame a word.

The reason this restaurant makes it to the drunken blog post is their highly impressive collection of beers on tap. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t like beer. I do, however, adore cider. Since Les Moules didn’t have any cider (a mortal bar sin in my book) our waiter advised that I try their apple beer. “Beer?” I cringed. Hubby encouraged me to give it a chance and promised to drink it if I didn’t like it. I can’t recall if I had four or five pints but either way I think it’s safe to say that the beer was vaguely drinkable.

That night, the night before we had to hit the road for Poland, we stumbled back to our hotel on the subway. Hubby still remembers very little of this trip but I have vivid memories of our bedside clock reading 8:30 p.m. Yes, dearest Readers, we managed to get ridiculously sloshed and pass out before most families had even sat down for dinner. We’re talented that way!