I just want a cake

After re-shoeing we decided to hop the next tram and look for some lunch. We first hit Kafka's haunt at the Grand Hotel Europa café - no way. The place reeks of smoke and there is no non-smoking section. We find a nice ice cream place that has great cake - but the seats are vintage plastic McDonalds and the smoking section is not divided from the non-smoking section by anything more than an invisible line drawn through the room.

The guide books lied. They said that smoking was prohibited everywhere.

Okay, so we'll just find another cafe with good-looking baklava and a non-smoking area. Nope. We comb the Václavské náměstí, but there is nothing to be found. Oh, there's Starbucks, but they have American cake. Or the place is packed, or full of smoke. We are beginning to think we won't get anything when we find Dobrá čajovna.

It's a tea room that must have 50 different kinds of tea on the menu. They give you the thick menus and a little bell to ring when you have decided. There is also something to eat - no cakes, but after all this walking we are happy with smoke-free.

It was very refreshing, and I've never had a blue-green tea before. I think I could have spent the rest of the day there if the weather was not so good (mostly because they have free Internet, I suppose).

But the sun was shining, so we headed back out. WiseMan spied a sunny park, the Františkánská zahrada, and occupied a park bench. I got ice cream and we enjoyed it in the sun before I took off to check out the shops and the church of the Franciscan cloister nearby, the Church of Our Lady of the Snow.

The church was strangely proportioned - about as long as it was high. I later read that it was supposed to be a very large church, but they ran out of money. There is so much gold all over the place, no wonder they have alarms set up. Why the church has all this prunk and ornament is really beyond my comprehension.

In the evening we decided to try a Czech movie with English subtitles, Odcházení (Havel's Leaving). The film is from Vaclev Havel, playwright and former premier of the Czech Republic. It is a filmed surreal play about a head of state trying to adjust to not being head of state any more. I guess we missed a lot of the Czech cultural hints, although the audience wasn't laughing much, either.

WiseMan had purchased a book by Havel in the afternoon, he asked sarcastically if he could perhaps return it.

We chose a nice, quiet Czech restaurant for dinner. It was surprisingly comfy and the food was good, but the wait for the food was horribly long.

Tomorrow noon we head back to Berlin, there are still a million things to see here....