Ten things I learned in Prague

1) 'Don't cry for me Argentina' sounds rather odd in Czech. The taxi driver seemed to like it, though.

2) It's full of stone people, and most of them are naked. Not naked in an Adam and Eve clothes-haven't-been-thought-of-yet' kinda way, but naked in a 'hey-baby-let's-get-it on', kinda way. No demure draping of sheets for these dudes. Seriously, its wall to wall breasts in this place. In a nice way. Lucky they're made of stone or they would be fucking cold.

3)If you are an English speaker, you should pay attention to your grammar, because there is a good chance that the Prague residents you speak to have better English than you do. (Better than I do, anyway.) We had quite an interesting conversation with the woman running the cloak-room in the Museum of decorative arts, who wanted our advice as to the correct British equivalent of the American 'You're welcome.' We were struggling a bit, but after some discussion settled on 'It's my pleasure', though a little more formal. Meanwhile, I had to take a surreptitious peek in my guide book to even get the Czech word for 'thankyou' right.

4)There is live classicial music to be had right, left and centre. And much of it is free.

5) Little golden pointy stars are de rigeur for your average halo. If wearing stars, stone people are also likely to be wearing clothes (cf. point 2, above).

6) The Time Out city guide is crap.

7) If you are a fan of Art Deco, and Art Nouveau, Prague is the place for you. Decorative arts, architechture, furniture glasswear. Its all there in its stylish glory, happily nestled in amongst the more expected medieval and baroque flourishes.

8) It's a beatiful city, full of very beautiful things. I include in this category a long line of large yellow penguins.

9) The Bohemians were making extraordinarily delicate engraved glasswear at a period in history when, my beloved Scot reminds me, technology in the UK largely consisted of 'struggling to hammer a pair of logs together'. What is even more extraordinary is that it is that many pieces of the aforesaid glasswear is still in one piece. If this is possible, why do I find it impossible to keep a set of six wine glasses intact for more than about six months?

10) You can buy cannabis vodka. And yet, I practically had to wrestle the barman in our hotel to the ground before he would give me any absinthe. Nice girls in nice hotels don't, apparently. I did.