KARLIN

View Larger Map

The summer is over, well as far as entertaining my children before school starts and the weather is concerned, it is. This week we visited Karlin and this area is significant to me for several reasons. The first one is that it was the first area of Prague that I visited in 1999 on arriving in Prague to take my TEFL exam, I had a welcoming meal with all my fellow studiers at the Charleston, all of whom have now left but I am happy to say that some of them are still good friends and thanks to Facebook and the internet in general we still keep in touch and if my life is an example there has been plenty of things to talk about. The next reason is more known to everyone and there are visible signs on almost every street corner and that was the floods of 2002 and caused a substantial amount of damage which almost 10 years on is only visible on the plaques on the wall marking the water level at its highest point and the last point because I did say several though in fact there could be many more, is the outdoor cinema and the gardens around the residence of the War veterans which, and I mean the gardens or park, have recently been refurbished or redesigned, anyway it looks bloody good and worth a visit.

Review no. 1

Karlin unlike other districts of Prague is doable in one trip so by the time we reached the Golden Cross we were scorched, parched and hungry and from the outside this place looked a wee bit expensive but as we had a look at the menu we were pleasantly surprised and that was just the beginning. The main reason for going in apart from our physical distress was the sign for the beer. It wasn't Plzen and I had never tried it before so it was game on. As we walked into the restaurant we were a little concerned that it being so nice and also so close to the more expensive hotels in Prague we were going to lose an arm or a head but sometimes you can be wrong with your first impressions and happily today was going to be one of those days. We decided that we would stick to the daily menu from the start so as to get a perspective of the no frills food and I had the chicken saltimbocca and my darling SVG who at 9 month pregnant is still waddling around the streets with her long suffering partner, who constantly complains about how slow she has become and tries to convince her to find me a younger slimmer companion to cover the blog with him but she surprisingly yields to such requests, had the spring onion soup.The saltimbocca if I was being picky was a little overcooked and the cured ham wrapping was a little too strong for the delicate flavour of the chicken breast. The sauce was also a little too salty and not bright and clear. The soup on the other hand was clear and sharp with lots of flavour. The one thing that we were very surprised about after our meal was that everything that was served to us was gluten-free from the bread to the beer, so for that it gets a big thumbs up, I was slightly suspicious that something was a little different but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. To sum up then we were satisfied with what was served to us and thought that it was good value for money and the staff were very friendly with the right amount of attention and they were very professional and not in a snobby way.