Let’s first take a quick tour around the old town center and hit a few of the major sites to give you a good feel of the medieval city. Prague’s old town is the center of the action, and the area where the city sees its most visitors. The Old Town Square is surrounded by Gothic architecture and serves as a popular meeting space for locals and tourists alike.

One site not to be missed in the Old Town Square, besides marveling at the Gothic architecture, is Prague’s Astronomical Clock. As the world’s first astronomical clock, it has become the most visited attraction in Prague that draws millions of tourists every year. Every hour the historic clock comes alive with song and dance. It’s nothing more than a few head nods and body turns from little statuettes, but in the medieval period that would have been quite the show.

Perhaps Prague’s most iconic image, Charles Bridge, serves as one of the only surviving gated bridges in Europe. All of Europe used to be littered with guarded bridges such as this, but over the centuries war and technological advancement has seen them all but destroyed. Once the only crossing over the Vltava River, the bridge today is lined with dozens of old Christian statues and imagery, a further reminder of the city’s rich historic past. The bridge is often a quiet place at night, but comes alive during daylight hours bustling with local artists, painters, streets peddlers, and vendors alongside travelers crossing the bridge.

You might be surprised to learn that Prague also has the largest castle in the world. Dating back to the 9th century, Prague Castle is officially the largest castle in the world occupying a gigantic 750,000 square feet of space. Much of the castle is still in use by government officials, but you can still awe at the castle’s magnificent size, stroll the castle gardens, and visit the ancient St. Vitus Cathedral on the castle mount. Golden Lane is an ancient street within the Prague Castle complex also worth checking out, dating back to the 15th Century.

It was while I was wondering around the historic city center that I made some new friends to explore Prague’s beer scene with. I met a couple of awesome Italian gals while walking around, and we met a local that told us about this place, U Medvídků, which apparently boasted the strongest beer in the world. Well of course we had to go see this for ourselves so we made our way there. We walked into a local hall where we found some serious beer drinkers.

The history of U Medvidku dates back to 1466 with the house named after one of its first owners, Mr. Jan Nedvídek, who founded the brewery and manufactured beer until 1898. The 550-year old institution is today famous for its X-Beer 33. The dark, bittersweet lager ferments for six months in an oak barrel with an alcohol content of 11.8%, making it the strongest brew in the Czech Republic, and apparently the strongest made beer in the world.

Be sure to line the stomach with hearty local foods and remember to pace yourself as the beer can easily get away from you. We had a few more glasses than we perhaps should have and then continued to explore Prague’s nightlife scene. One of the coolest things I found with the nightlife scene is the abundance of underground bars and unique setups, like the underground ice bar we stumbled onto. You get your own fur coast as you walk into the glitzy ice bar…but that’s a story for another time!