Prague's Best Cafés and Really Typical Souvenirs

Most souvenir shops at Prague centre are quite ugly, noisy, selling kitsch witch has nothing to do witch the Czech Republic (e.g. Russian Mathryoska dolls). For a tourist it is also easy to go into a overpriced restaurant or café, therefore here comes my tips!

Cafés
The café culture in Prague is nowadays really great, there are many high-quality stylish cafés witch are not over-priced. For your inspiration here are some lists. Since May 2017 finally all cafes, bars and clubs are non-smoking, but the list of the non-smoking cafes I created before still summarizes the nice ones ;)

• My Foursquare list of 31 great non-smoking cafés:
• An overview of Best cafés according to great blog Taste of Prague:
• And here a list of non-smoking bars from Expats.cz 

Cafe Cafe is still my favourite one - because of best cakes in the world!

Souvenirs
The most souvenirs shops in the city centre are owned by post-soviet Mafia as they were the best connected to politics during wild privatisation in 1990's after the Velvet Revolution. Thus do not buy there anything! They sell "Czech glass" or "Czech/Bohemian Garmet", which are fakes and not at all Czech (the true originals are Moser for glass and Granát Turnov for Garmet). It is even worse with  Mathryoska dolls, which are of Russian origin - because of Soviet invasion in 1968 - it can be seen even as offensive to sold these souvenirs as "typical Czech".

Do not buy Mathryoska! They could be seen as symbol of Russian/Soviet imperialism!

What to buy then? It is up to how much money you have - if you do not want to buy Czech Beer than it's possible to buy some typical sweets which are cheap and easy to test (Czech sweets you should buy and try). Another possibility is to buy natural cosmetics - want to enjoy Beer Bath? Try products of Manufaktura or Botanicus. BIO herbs, tees and spices are produced in my home region near borders with Austira by Sonnentor. Another option is hand-made Czech stationary Papelote.
For affordable design souvenirs you can go to Pragtique.
The British royal family prefers Moser, but if its to classical for you - you can try modern design in Artel. Further tips for Czech modern design can be found at the post from Taste of Prague: Prague (not only Christmas) Gifts Ideas.

Praguetiq offers affordable original design souvenirs