We climb the mountain. Day 5

Totally missed breakfast today, which is a good and a bad thing. A good sign because it means we’re becoming human again and bad because we need our vitamins, minerals and caffeine. It was sorted and all in good time to start the day’s activities. First stop was the Brewing museum right beside our favourite bar ‘Na Parkánu’, the tour is interesting with all sorts of beer-making equipment on display. One of the hidden jewels of this place is a fully working mini-brewery, capable of producing 30ltrs of beer a day, it took 8 years to build and it’s a serious piece of gear. Another curious item is a reproduction of a bar in Prague in the 30s, complete with Kafka lookalike. The highlight of the day and one of the high points of the trip was the visit to the Pilsen Urquel brewery. The tour takes an hour and a half and is an essential box to tick for any beer connoisseur. Brewing is not a very visual process. Stuff gets boiled up in big copper kettles, more stuff is added, it’s strained, cooled, more stuff is added and then it’s left to do its business. The bottling plant is where they bring the humans who are easily mesmerised by the sight of tens of thousands of bottles whizzing around like a time-lapse traffic jam. Our guide (Ana or Eva, sorry), took us through the whole process and her well-practised patois produced the memorable phrase – ‘Never trust a skinny Brewmaster’. We visited part of the maze of tunnels under the brewery which was originally used as the fermentation area but a small part of it is only used to brew a special visitors batch which we duly sampled – pure un-filtered, unpasteurised Pilsner Urquel – Delicious! The entrance ticket also included a glass of beer in our favourite bar so it was back there for a beer and a sausage. I hope you’re beginning to see a pattern emerging here. Pack up and Prague-bound. It’s only an hour away and after some wrong-turning and swearing, we found ourselves at the Louis Leger Hotel, a good big room with plenty of space for Willy to hide from my snoring.


We have some friends in Prague in the shape of Radka and Tony. They have just moved here and hopefully it’ll be long-term. Radka is from Brno, just down the road while Tony is from Derby. He is a true Beer-Hound and no better place than Prague where he is busying himself compiling a list of bars and beers. We visited a few of them on the first night, Kulovy Blest and U Pinkasu among others and a welcome change from the tourist traps around the old-Town Square they were. Our last port of call was ‘Lokal’ http://ambi.cz/, right on the other side of Charles Bridge. So it was two very satisfied but weary travellers who made the long walk back up to the crib.