On our most recent trips we've used a Trip Advisor app on our mobile phone to find restaurants. (
It is the
"Offline City Guide".) It has been amazingly accurate, and now I won't sit down somewhere to eat unless I know where the place ranks on this app. We ate at top-25 places in Rome, Amsterdam, and now most recently Prague and Budapest. No need for wireless internet, either. You download the city you want before you leave home, and then you can browse the map (if you are somewhere and want a good place close to you) or the rankings (if you are keen to find the very best place in that city).
Needless to say, I am hooked on this app! Good food is something I sorely miss here in the Netherlands, so every time we travel I don't want to risk a bad meal because we're in a hurry or we don't know where to go. The app always knows where to go!
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| Prague: gorgeous architecture, great food, and Starbucks on every corner. |
One of the popular things to do in Prague is to touch certain parts of statues, facades, etc.
It is apparent, both because of the queue to do so, and because of the shininess of the proper area to be touched, so of course I got in line (for this one).
The Three Storks was the closest highly ranked restaurant to where we ended up at dinner time in Prague. Despite the lack of customers (it was early in the evening), we settled down at a huge table, and tried to entertain Dina while we waited for culinary greatness.
We didn't have to wait long for the assorted bread and herbed butter. The squash soup was amazing, with just the right level of spice and creamyness.
My husband's appetizer was unique, pairing goat cheese with red beets, caramelized onions, and sunflower seeds.
Unfortunately, my Spicy Chicken with Jasmine rice entree was way too heavy on the salt.
Those black specks? They are some kind of salt-pepper mixture which made the dish one-dimensional and completely overpowered the lovely chicken and cilantro.
My husband's entree of duck with beets and dumpling-like potatoes lived up to the hype.
A fancy bar added to the ambiance. Dina is in the picture for scale and cuteness.
On a less sophisticated note, everywhere we turned we saw a special kind of breaded-snack for sale called, "Trdelnik".
After the fourth or fifth spotting, we realized we had to try this
"traditional cake and sweet pastry" from this part of the world.
The shop we selected was on the stairs up to the castle area. Perhaps it was too close to the end of the day because the last remaining trdelnik were no longer spinning.
Unfortunately I'd not recommend this pastry because it was rather chewy, with perhaps too much yeast flavor and not enough flake. One might suggest we got a bad one, however, so take this review with a grain of salt.
Go to the top of the stairs for the view of the city, however, because it is gorgeous.
I was so pleased with the ubiquitous architecture in Prague.
Meticulous details, like the mosaic at the top of this building, are everywhere:
We also got some fancy coffee in a small cafe in the same building as the cubist museum, which is closed on Mondays, d'oh!
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| Yes, that is Dina swiping my cookie. |
If you have kids, I also recommend the "Mirror-Maze", if you can find it. Here's your hint: follow the signs pointing to "
Bludiště".
Stay tuned for a review of a very interesting restaurant in Budapest.
