We decided that at the end of our Paris trip, we would fly to Prague. Neither of us had ever been, but wanted to go. After a week of champagne, while delicious, beer never sounded so good.
I am a Marriott points guy, so we stayed at Carlo IV, its an Autograph property. I am usually not a fan of Autograph properties, but this one was nice. I had set up transportation through the hotel when we arrived in PRG to the hotel and then also returning to the airport. I am a fan of setting up transportation to/from the hotels when on vacation. It saves time and is usually not too expensive. The Carlo offers their chauffeur service for 38 euro one way, so very reasonable. The hotel is a quick 10 minute walk to the town square.
The pool at The Carlo is amazing. Its indoors and in the basement, but its dark and so relaxing. They have a cold plunge, sauna and steam room. We did a couples massage there and it was magical. I would at least recommend spending a couple of hours at the pool to relax.
The Pool at The Carlo IV
We had dinner at a great restaurant that was really close to the hotel.. it was called, Portfolio. One of us had the tasting menu, shown below. The food was absolutely delicious. We had a great bottle of wine, which they decanted for us. It should also be noted that the wine was served at the correct temperature. Something hard to find and it shouldn’t be.
Tasting Menu
There are several local breweries and cool bars. The architecture here is absolutely beautiful. A few days here is plenty. We were here for two nights and one more would have been perfect. The one thing that we would have done if we had one more day is to go to Prague Castle. We did stop in the sex toy museum, which is a must. I won’t give any spoilers, just stop in. You will probably learn something.
Overall, we loved Prague. I’m glad that we took the couple of days at the end of the trip.
Since this is my first post and I’m still trying to figure out how I want to post information on my page, I’m going to stick to the basics of this trip and the activities that we did while on this trip. As a note, we traveled at the end of June.
Chateau
Entry Foyer
Chateau
Some of my crazy friends
I found this chateau, pictured in the header, on Olivers Travels (I wouldn’t recommend using them). Amazingly enough, chateaus are hard to find of this size in Champagne, France. The owner told us, there are two and this is one of them. This house was from the 17th century. We called it, “rustic chic”. It was nice and a very cool thing to do, but I will say, I like the more modern amenities in life. We ended up with 13 friends to join in on this crazy trip. Everyone flew from all over the US to help celebrate this milestone that I wasn’t looking forward to at all. We had the chateau for 7 nights and friends came and went as the week went on, which was fun. You never know how 13 people that are ages 30-50 are going to interact, but everyone got along and some met for the first time and now are friends forever.
We opted to cook most dinners at the chateau. They had a couple of charcoal grills and a decent kitchen. The owners were nice enough to get groceries for us (for a fee + groceries) to get us through the first few days. We had friends coming that rented a car, so we could get to the grocery store after that.
We had setup two days of tours of champagne houses. Olivers Travels, say they help with this, but they can’t. So we found a company called, France Intense. They put together two very nice days of tours for us. Our tour guide Dorothy was amazing and I would recommend her to anyone. We did a mix of mainstream champagne houses (Moet & Chandon and Taittinger). The better story here, are the family owned houses that we went to. These champagne houses were literally peoples houses or they lived on the property.
Here are my favs:
Dominique Foureur- This house was the coolest of all. It was a husband and wife operation. All of their champagne was in a cellar at their house. They still hand cork every bottle that they produce. They do not speak English, so Dorothy translated for us. After the quick tour, we went into their kitchen and sat at their kitchen table to do the tasting. What a treat it was and felt so intimate. http://www.champagne-foureur.fr
Part of the bottling process
Image courtesy of Christian Dohn
The other small champagne house that we went to was Le Gallais. It sat up on a hill overlooking the vineyards below, just an amazing view. The champagne was amazing and the service was great here. This house is in Epernay.
Images courtesy of Nancy Maack
The last stop in France after spending 7 amazing nights in the countryside was back to Paris. A couple of our friends had come to Europe early and then met us in Paris to head to the chateau. Since we had one night in Paris and needed something to do, they had recommended a river cruise for dinner. Thank you Nancy and David for that recommendation.
There are a ton of these river cruises, so for reference, the name of the company that we went on was, Bateaux Mouches. Do yourself a favor and just spend the extra money for the “excellence” menu over the “prestige” menu. The difference is 34 euro and includes champagne and wine. We had a group of 7 with an amazing table at the front of the boat. Its inside and has air conditioning with an open air viewing area upstairs. http://www.bateaux-mouches.fr is the website for the dinner cruise on the Seine.
One of the EntreesView from our table The couple actually got engaged
Images courtesy of Christian Dohn
I would like to thank everyone that made this trip such a blast. It would not have happened without you. Names are not in any order, so no favoritism :). Billy, Beth, Ryan, Courtney, Heath, Wil, Amy, Christian, Brian, Jason, Nancy and David.
JD's Passport 