Tony Denesa

How this started

It started the way it does for a lot of people: with a trip that was supposed to be four days and turned into a habit.

The first visit to Prague was in winter, which in hindsight was luck rather than judgement. The city in January is not the city on the postcards — the bridge is empty at nine, the light goes at four, and what is left is the part that does not perform for anyone: a vaulted pub full of steam and regulars who have had the same table for thirty years, a café where people are working rather than photographing, a tram along a black river.

I went back the following spring to see whether the place held up in better weather. It did, differently. I have been going back ever since.

From enthusiasm to advising

For a long time this was just enthusiasm. Friends asked where to stay, I sent long emails, the emails got longer, and eventually somebody pointed out that I was doing consulting for free and badly organised.

Turning it into work changed what I paid attention to. Enthusiasm notices what is beautiful; advising has to notice what goes wrong. Which street is loud at two in the morning. Which square is unbearable in August. Which restaurant on the main pedestrian street is charging double for worse food than the place three streets behind it. Which "central" apartment listing is forty minutes from the centre.

That is most of what a travel advisor actually does — not finding the famous things, which anyone can do, but knowing the specific, unglamorous catch attached to each of them.

Why this site is written the way it is

There are a great many Prague guides and most of them are the same guide. They list the same twelve sights in the same order, they are cheerful about all of them, and they are cheerful because being critical is bad for affiliate conversion.

I would rather tell you not to stay on the Old Town's party streets.

So the rule here is that every recommendation carries its catch. Hradčany is magnificent and has almost nowhere to eat after dark. The Old Town has everything at your door and the streets around Dlouhá are genuinely loud until three. The tower of the Old Town Hall charges admission and has a queue, while Letná is free and has the better view of the bridges.

Where the site earns money — accommodation, tickets, transfers — it is marked, and it never changes what gets recommended. There is a fuller explanation on the about page.

How the writing is done

The place pages are built from data: opening hours, review counts, coordinates, district. Those are facts, they are checked against the source, and where a fact is missing the sentence is simply not written rather than guessed at.

The long-form pieces — the guides, the blog, the district write-ups — are written. They carry opinions, and the opinions are mine.

If something here is wrong, out of date, or a place has closed, I would genuinely like to know.