Around Prague - Ice SkatingPosted in: Blog, European Holiday
26th-28th December 2008
Probably the most exciting thing i have done in the past three days is ice skating! We (the family) all headed on a journey to try and find the national ice skating rink in ‘Ostrov Stvanice’. We walked on the north side of the river Vtlava, the main river that flows through most of Europe (also know as the Danube). Historically, the North side of the river was reserved for Royality and as a result houses the Royal Castle, Gardens and Observatory. However, between 1940 and 1993, the communists held them selfs in such high esteem that they built massive palaces of their own on the same side of the river. These palaces kept in tradition with the communist theme and were very bland, angular and grotesque in there design. These buildings quickly turn into slums and as a tourist really make you feel like you are in the middle of Gorky Park’s murder scene!
Anyways, we had arrived at the point on Google Maps where it said the ice rink was and couldn’t find it anywhere. The only thing in front of us looked like a massive slaughter house about the size of soccer pitch. Luckily, we saw somepeople walk out of a door with some ice skated in their hands. We walked to the door and saw hundreds of people inside this massive Bunnings like shed skating on an enormous ice rink! After a little bit of ‘lost in translation’ with the skate fitters we finally got a decent pair of skates and headed out on to the rink. I was surprised how similar it was to roller skating, so I quickly picked it up and soon I was travelling around the rink at some pretty good speeds. Nothing like the 4-80 year old locals who were going around backwards, sidewards, upsidedown…jokes but twice as fast and far more eloquently than eny of the Egans’. NOTE: The only difference is the braking system…as i soon found out! There is no rubber stopper so unless you can do a few twirls and the pizza shape with your skates then your probably gonna hit the sides. I hit the sides. It was painful. Very painful. Kind of like what you see in U.S hockey games. But i was ok and kept going.
We headed home at about 4:30 and as usual it was already pitch black outside. We stopped at a little Czech restaurant and got a few good bowls of Goulash and 0,5 (half a litre) of the local beer Krusovice. It was a good day, but i was exhausted!
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Ice Skating in Prague
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