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To Travelers Digest Prague Page Get Your Business Listed Today! Travelers Digest 2005 Review of Prague, June 2005 Arriving in Prague from our long drive from Dortmund, Germany in the early afternoon of June 10th, 2005, we quickly starting looking for a place to park. After 30 minutes of driving around & through the very heart of the city, we located a paid parking lot. Dakota and myself were traveling with our Russian friends from Dortmund and after parking the four of us piled from the car and headed for a small sidewalk café for some drinks. The last time I was in Prague, in April 2001, the city was a real bargain, but as I read the café’s menu, I soon realized this might not now be the case. Four Euros for a glass of coke was definitely no bargain. Walking around for a couple of hours I saw that the streets had also changed. Beggars; homeless people sleeping on the sidewalks, little children of immigrants approaching tourist-offering sex. It was heartbreaking to put it mildly. What had happened to this ancient and wondrous city in only 4 short years? Was joining the European Union, accepting the Euro the problem or was greed and lack of political leadership the real issue…the latter was the most surely the apparent answer. The four of us spent the rest of the day, driving and strolling the lanes and avenues offering the most visual stimulus, while stopping all through the city to check prices. Hoping to disprove our original concept of outlandish pricing…we remained dismayed! Dining was unaffordable; a small bottle of water varied from 2 to 4 Euros, depending on exact location and the hotels had all gone mad. The most reasonable room we could find was 4 kilometers from the city center and even then the small room, with no TV, was 60 Euros. Being four, we had to rent 2 rooms and breakfast was not included! Mid-day the next day we located an Internet café and searched for a better accommodation bargain. We located a vacation apt bld. in the center of town that rented full size furnished apts.for the four of us for 135 Euros. Our Russian friends were to leave the next morning and liking the apt. we wanted to remain in the apt. and hoped they would lower the price. After chatting with the young girl at the counter, she called and negotiated a much better deal with the manager…67 Euros per day for the two of us in the same apt. We ended up spending 12 days. The apt. building is owned and managed by The Masna Apartment House, on Masna Blvd. and we highly recommend it! It was our reprieve in the city and though we enjoyed the 14th century architecture found throughout the city center, we were not deeply impressed. The Czech government most surely needs to take some control of the outlandish and ridiculous pricing being orchestrated by the local tourism businesses. Gouging the tourists is the quickest way to lose a city’s attraction status, not to mention the beggars, drunks urinating anywhere they pleased and the lack of tourism information centers. While there are endless things to see and while we could, like other touring companies, delicately and favorably describe the city, we simply won’t! We were just to frustrated at the out of control tourism industry in Prague. Taxis charging whatever they wanted, vendors over-charging the tourist by 300 percent. Dining establishments setting their prices 2 to 3 times higher for the tourists and everywhere in the center it was the same. While the city has many old, fine churches and countless attractions, we do not, in all honesty, recommend the city for budget conscience travelers. It’s just too much to pay to walk in crowded masses to snap photos of old churches. Even to hop on the tram was a nightmare. First you had to walk quite a long way just to purchase a ticket directly and only from the central train station. You could not purchase a ticket like in most cities from the local tobacco stores or while boarding. Grabbing a taxi was relatively easy, but cost a small fortune. Walking was a maze and regardless of your sense of direction…you remain lost! There are just too many better locations to visit that won’t leave you broke & frustrated and have even more to offer. East Bulgaria on the beautiful Black Sea is just one such place! To reiterate what we didn’t like about the city. First the prices, secondly the crowds, thirdly the lack of services, fourthly the contempt and rudeness of business owners & staff and last, but not least was the lack of tourism information centers and the locals don’t speak any other languages. We do however feel that the city center is mostly safe and as, I personally like to go for long walks in the early morning hours, I never once saw anyone menacing or even slightly threatening, other than the immigrants offering sex, money exchange and drugs. Stay away from these people! I will also inform you of one local business to definitely stay far away from and that is Mary’s Tours! They supposedly provide lodging and tours, but mostly provide fraudulent prices and complete disregard for client’s complaints. We had scheduled their services months in advance and upon arriving were rudely and totally unprofessionally treated. After some research we discovered that they were indeed just another Prague business ripping off unsuspecting tourists. One excellent attraction that we did find, however, lies outside the city and during our stay in Prague we took a day tour, about 120 miles, toward the German border and discovered a Nazi prisoner of war and work camp…Terezin. You can read our complete review of this horrific remainder of mans incredible mordacity under our soon upcoming Terezin Review. Leaving the city on the 22nd of June our next journey would indeed be an arduous, but enlightening adventure as we boarded a taxi for a 13-hour drive across Czech, Austria and Slovenia into the port city of Rijeka in the country of Croatia. It was to be the beginning of quite an eye-opening discovery of a much-ignored sector of the world. You can soon read all about it as we continue to travel the globe bringing our readers the best and the worst our world has to offer. In all fairness for the tourists desiring to visit the city of Prague, I have listed some of the city’s best attractions, but I must forewarn you…be prepared to pay a premium. Written by Mike Smith
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