Europe Trip Commentary Part I

I've decided to write about my trip in themes. Makes it a little more interesting and well, helps me to remember things that happened.

Food

The food in Prague is so frickin cheap, as long as you know where to eat. My friend took us to some pretty nice Czech places, including U Pinkasu, where they tapped the first Pilsner in 1843. Apparently there is this HUGE sealed vat underground, where a truck comes and fills it once every two weeks. I don’t know what happens if they run out before that, but I guess it’s pretty big. Out of the top Czech beers, I had two of them: Pilsner and Gambrinus. They were pretty good as far as beer tastes, and I generally don’t like it. Not bad for about $1.40 each (and they’re huge!). One interesting fact that I learned - Apparently, Budweiser stole their recipe from the Czechs and there has been this huge battle going on over the rights to it. It is called Budvar in Prague and it’s slowly making a comeback.

On the first night I had goulash. They serve it on this plate, with a few pieces of meat, lots of stew sauce, and four “dumplings”, which are just flat round pieces of “bread”. Yum. The price was exceptionally reasonable, 109 CZK, which works out to about $6. The second night I had fried cod, which reminded me of Bahamas, but this was so much tastier. I managed to get through 11/2 pieces with no bones, and then BAM, suddenly in the last ½ piece there were about 50 million bones. Not complaining though, just felt bad because I’m such a slow eater to begin with!

I must confess, we ate Chinese food while in Prague. This is what happens when your “tour guide” doesn’t meet up with you for a day. Earlier, we indulged in chicken burgers and fried cheese (which apparently we were supposed to try). Quite interesting. Wish I had taken a picture. So this Chinese food, just a little fast food hole in the wall, was interesting. Run by Vietnamese people and cooked with Czech ingredients. Edible. Cheeeeeap.

The next night we became even BIGGER tourists, indulging in an Italian restaurant next door to our hotel. We had walked around all day and the menu looked pretty decent. We could have had more Czech food, but it just didn’t feel satisfying enough. We were starving. So we had some pasta and pizza, which I have to admit tasted AMAZING. It tasted so good. I guess we are just used to eating certain foods - and seeing how Italy is a lot closer to Prague than Canada, maybe it tastes better for that reason alone. This food was also dirt cheap. I think my meal was $10 including a full pasta, garlic bread, beer, and tip. Come to think of it, we had Italian two nights in a row. My friend took us to this small little place where the pizza is really good. I opted for pasta again and man, I must say that the two best meals I had in Europe were friggen Italian dishes.

This brings me to another point. The food may be cheap and the beer may be cheap, but Coke is not cheap. And we had soooo much Coke on our trip. I don’t know why traveling makes you crave Coke so much. Must be the sugar. Beer is so cheap in the supermarket. I think Corona is the most expensive beer that I saw and even then it was cheaper than buying a stupid beer at the bar in Toronto.

Interesting find in Prague: Paprika flavoured Lays. Tasted a little like BBQ.


Tasty!

Off to Amsterdam, where my goal was to have one of their famous pancakes. I had to wait until the last day to have it, but it was worth it. Sooooo good. Soooo expensive.


Yummm.....

Another interesting find: Sugar-free Red Bull. Kind of counteracts the theory that Red Bull only makes you hyper because of the sugar. Anyways, it didn’t do a single thing to me. I must have been REALLY tired.


How is it supposed to work without the sugar??


Another bad tourist moment happened when we tried to eat in a downtown restaurant, but since the prices are so ridiculously expensive in Amsterdam, we only wanted a beer and some fries. After battling the language barrier to order fries, our waiter, who was Asian, said sorry you can’t order fries if you don’t order a meal. Baffled, we struggled to find something else to eat..dessert maybe? After about….10 seconds of deliberating, the waitress just walked away and started serving the next table. So we left. She was kind of rude. So we went to the next best place – McDonalds. Blasphemous! Eating McDonalds in Europe! We had to. We are poor individuals. And the Euro is not exactly the Canadian dollar. On the menu they had this thing called the McKroket. I still have no idea what it is supposed to be, even after eating it. Not wanting to break the fast food string, we had a drink (me, Coke) at Burger King while waiting for the train to take us back to the airport.

We had about 6 hours to kill overnight at the airport, so we wandered around a bit. The only things open 24 hours were a few restaurants and fast food joints. We were getting a little thirsty so we hit up Burger King again ( I know, I know). I had a banana milkshake, which was pretty good, but not as satisfying as a large icy cold Coke. Too many Cokes in one day can kill you. Or at least make you very fat.