Tips from the Prague Tourism: walks, cafes, day trips

Are you looking for trustworthy and updated tips for Prague? I am very happy to recommend the official webpage of Prague city tourism. They are doing lately a great job showing interesting walks, cafes or day-trips.

Do you know what means PIS? It was Prazska informacni sluzba, "Prague information service" standing for the former unlucky name of the official tourism office of Prague. Luckily, they went through rebranding, renaming and - recreating their content. And now it is pretty great!

Cafes & walks

For example I like how they categorize cafes of Prague into historical, atmospheric and hipster/3rd wave. I provided links of best cafes before on this blog, yet this categorization can be very helpful. Of course, there are other specialized websites with less know cafes, for example this one from Czech Design on summer cafes with shady gardens (Google Translated).

Furthermore, I like more "Insiders like" walks around Prague quarters. A walk around Vinohrady and Albertov which I posted on this blog in 2011 - is combining two city tourism tours of Vinohrady and Vysehrad. I like their brochures for those tours a lot! If any link stops working , check their website or go to their office in the Old Town Hall.

From Vinohrady to Zizkov, one of several tours suggested by Prague City Tourism.

Art & Day-trips

Their overview of design/art places and shops is quite handy too. Among the day-trips from Prague  which I would like to do, is my favourite the visit of the Rückl Glassworks, where is produced the finest modern Bohemian crystal. They have also a great shop near the Old Town Square which is for sure worth of visiting.

Get tips on where to enjoy or buy Czech design.

(Both pictures in this post are from the Prague Tourism website)

Czech fairy-tales, cartoons and puppets

Many visitors of Prague say that it looks like a fairytale. But it was not the charm of Prague or the highest density of châteaus in the world which led to a fairy-tales boom. It was rather the Communist Regime (1948-89) which forced many talented artists to fled to fairy-tales making as other genres were deemed to political. Thanks to this circumstance has Czechoslovakia became a fairy-tale powerhouse. Although this blog is about city of Prague - this post is rather an introduction to the Czech (fairy tale) culture. On the other hand, it is also a good inspiration for some original Czech souvenirs as you may see and buy a lot of fairy tale characters in Prague as well. Furthermore, since the end of 2016 is the Czech and Slovak puppetry listed on the UNESCO World heritage list as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity which may hint to a possible renaissance of Czech puppetry.

Kašpárek is a typical character of Czech puppetry (more about its history here),
which was added to the UNESCO list of intangible world heritage