Prague is the right size for this experiment. The old town is about two kilometres across, the castle is a hill on one side of it, and you cannot get meaningfully lost because the river is always downhill. So we booked a flat and nothing else, and spent four days finding out what a city offers when you are not asking it for anything specific.
Mostly it offers mornings. The bridge that is a crush at eleven has about fifteen people on it at half past six, and half of them are photographers who will not look at you.
From the castle side, which is where the whole town lines up. Photo: Diego F. Parra.
Four days, no plan
- Day one: cross the river four times. That is the only instruction.
- Day two: pick a tram, ride it to the end, walk back towards the middle.
- Day three: one big thing, booked that morning. One.
- Day four: go back to whichever of the first three days you liked.
Cities are not lists. The list is a way of getting somebody through a weekend without them noticing they never actually looked at anything.
Where it falls down
It falls down on anything that needs booking. We did not see the inside of the Strahov library, because the slots go days ahead, and there is no version of unplanned travel that beats a timed ticket. Book the one or two things that genuinely require it, then leave the rest alone.
