December saw the official reopening of the former cloister wine bar, an event participated in by Cardinal Vlk amongst others. The establishment is now run by Coloseum Restaurants. Regulars of the original wine bar may be in for a surprise. Only the name – Il Convento, or cloister – is reminiscent of their original hangout, and even then you’d need a knowledge of Romance languages to realize it.

The Anglo-Asian restaurant Sansho has already had a monument to its fame raised in the media, and for good reason. We visited it with one thing in mind: either to 1) festoon the monument with yet more flowers, or 2) furnish it with a more accurate inscription.

Here in the Czech Republic, the two classic Easter baked goods are mazanec and beránek. Mazanec is a sweet, though not cloyingly so, bread filled with raisins and often topped with almonds. Beránek is a cake baked in the shape of a lamb. Many commercial varieties are covered in chocolate.

If you go back far enough, you’ll find a pagan root for anything. But that doesn’t explain the continuing popularity among Czechs for baking Christmas sweets, from chocolate-topped baskets filled with nuts, to gingerbread fish, dusted vanilla rolls, and doughy wasp-nests oozing egg-liqueur. Just make sure you hold out on sampling them until Dec. 24 — legend says you’d be inviting misfortune.