When you’ve lived in a city for a long time, even a historical, cultural, tourist trap of a city like Prague, you soon stop doing the touristy stuff (generally before you’ve been there a year, or maybe two.) You become less concerned with where the hip, new clubs are and more focused of what restaurants are within walking distance.
But today, we decided to do something cool, that’s right in our neighborhood, sort of. As soon as you cross Sokolvska, you’re into a wild area, which was once the land of warehouses, scrap mongers and lots of derelict structures with overgrown yards, and is not yet filled in with new business centers and overpriced apartment buildings, although that’s definitely the intention.
Walk a bit toward the center, then turn through a cracked parking lot with grass and spindly trees growing through it, where no one has parked for 15 years, push through the trees at the back and there is a staircase down the bank and a short,simple dock, where a ferry boat arrives on the half hour, during daylight, during the summer. Same price as public transport, so if you have a monthly (or 3 monthly, or annual) pass, it’s free.
Helena and I were the only passengers on the way over. We didn’t have much of a plan for our day out; take the ferry across the river, walk around for a while, look for someplace to have a snack, and come back.
When we got off the boat, we found something right away we didn’t know was there , and that was the paved footpath. I don’t know how long that’s been there, or how I didn’t know it existed, but there you go. We also saw some ducks.
We wandered around, and had cheesecake and drinks in an overpriced place with the softest music I’ve ever heard, it was like Leonard Cohen on Quaaludes, and almost nothing on the menu, but they had a cannabis lemonade, so I had to try that. It wasn’t bad.
Then we caught the ferry back, with a couple of other passengers this time, enjoying the cool air and the long views over the river, in the light of the late afternoon.
www.gurukalehuru.com 