2 November 28, 2021The Sunday Times
Travel
L
ast week I went to Prague and
was surprised and delighted to
find more statues than people
lining the famous (and usually
packed) Charles Bridge. Its
beer halls, with long benches ordinarily
groaning with groups of stag and hen
parties, displayed none of the ruckus that
has come to define the eastern European
capital — you could hear only the gentle
clink of steins full of frothy pilsner.
Outside, the city’s immaculate
cobblestone streets were
devoid of drunken tourists.
Pre-Christmas it was back
to its magical best.
Stag and hen parties
abroad are a niche
subsection of travel that
have been all but killed
off by the pandemic,
thanks in part to the
complications of post-Covid
travel. If it’s difficult for your
family of four to get away, are you
really going to bother with a trip for 14,
all of whom might have very different
feelings towards foreign travel?
Rasmus Christiansen, 34, the chief
executive and founder of the stag
specialist tour company Pissup Tours,
based in Prague, has seen British
customers fall by 80 per cent since the
start of the pandemic. “November is a
slow month anyway, so you’d expect to
see fewer groups in Prague. But there’s
been a significant downturn, especially
from the UK, for which Prague has been
a mainstay for stag dos for the last 20
years,” he says.
Stefan Leth, 27, from West Sussex, was
meant to be in Prague last weekend on a
stag do with about 15 people. He ended up
staying in the UK. “The groom wanted to
go to Ibiza,” says Leth, who is best man
and organised the weekend. “We floated
the idea of going to Prague, but one by one
people dropped out because of the hassle
of foreign travel.” They settled on Brighton
instead. “Some people haven’t been
abroad yet since Covid,” Leth says. “With
such a big group you have to do something
that’s in everyone’s comfort zone.”
It doesn’t help that flights to eastern
European cities are not as cheap as
before the pandemic. The price of a
seemingly bargain airfare soon snowballs
when you add the cost of lateral flow tests
(from £5 to £30) and new baggage
allowances on Ryanair and easyJet
(between £8 and £27 one way). Plus
there’s the threat of a country
introducing fun-quashing restrictions,
going into lockdown or the UK
reintroducing quarantine on your return.T
My nostalgic self is enthusiastic to
return to Paris, but my realistic self says
maybe not (“Don’t fret about Paris. Like
all big cities, it’s a survivor”, last week).
Why? To start at the beginning is to be
overwhelmed at the ghastliness of Gare
du Nord. One leaves St Pancras, with its
gleaming concourse and attractive shops,
full of optimism. The contrast between
the two stations could not be more
marked. But the Paris of my youth was
something else. It led me to some
unforgettable places as a 17-year-old.
I would sit in bed in a tiny room in the Rue
de Vaugirard, from where I could just see
the top of the Eiffel Tower, while reading
Bonjour Tristesse and thinking — this is
living! No trip will ever quite recapture
the joie de vivre of that year in France.
Catherine Harden, ReigateI returned to Paris recently, 22 months
after my last visit. My funny little hotel
overlooked Notre Dame, which of course
is a construction site, but the welcome
I received was glorious. To be back in my
favourite room, view or no view, glimpses
of the river, the nightingale singing in the
park... Cities change, but the essence
remains. Paris still rocks. And always will.
MdC, via thetimes.co.ukPeople have tried for years to dismiss
Venice as a sinking, stinking clip joint,
getting steadily squelched into the
lagoon under the garish trainers of
a million cruise-ship zombies. Meh.
Still magical.
DeadCatBounce, via thetimes.co.ukPOWER TRIP
Your feature on electric scooters in
Paris (“The swiftest way to see the Paris
sights”, last week) reminded me of my
experiences in Reykjavik last August.
I was amazed by the number of people
of all ages casually using e-scooters to
navigate the town. Quite incongruous
given that so much of Icelandic culture
seems to be locked into the 1980s, but
also so typical of a country that I have
learnt to love for its eccentricity. I have
also enjoyed a tour of Rome by Segway
— an unexpected surprise. They are
also great for exploring our rural
environments, as I did at Moors Valley
Country Park near Bournemouth. The
sense of freedom and self-righteousness
for even the most eco-resistant tourist
is liberating.
Tim Farley, North YorkshireThe advent of e-scooters in Paris is
a positive thing. They are practical,
environmentally friendly and quiet. The
challenge is the lack of enforcement of
the regulations (also for cyclists). Sadly it
takes accidents and even deaths before
the authorities take notice.
ZZY, via thetimes.co.ukTravel
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Covid is just one factor, though. One
hen party I am attending next year has
switched from going to Europe to sticking
with Liverpool because one of the
attendees’ passport has expired — and she
worries the passport office backlog will
take months to clear.
For cities such as Prague this situation
presents an opportunity to, as Boris
Johnson would have it, build back better.
The Czech Republic’s tourist board has
long been wanting to distance itself from
drunken groups of men and women in
the capital. They’re not alone. This
summer the Amsterdam city government
released a statement saying: “We do not
want to go back to what we saw before
the pandemic, where massive crowds in
the Red Light District and the city’s
entertainment areas caused a nuisance to
residents.” It has since cracked
down, with fines for being
drunk and disorderly.
On the plus side, many
more young couples are
visiting Prague for
weekend breaks, reckons
Aris Pandelides, the 27-
year-old manager and
guide of 12Tours in the
city. “The type of tourist is
changing,” he says.
Stag and hen parties are
adapting too, Christiansen says.
“There’s more demand for stag
weekends away from cities. It was
happening before the pandemic, but
Covid has accelerated that,” he says.
The group has two outdoor adventure
sites in Germany and one launching in the
new year outside Prague.“Now the trend is to rent a cottage
somewhere remote and get out into
nature. We’ll still do brewery tours and
hire DJs for big house parties, but it’s not
going to annoy the locals, and people
will get to go on a hike in the countryside
with some beers in their backpack,”
Christiansen says.
While residents in cities such as
Barcelona, Krakow and Budapest may be
enjoying the new-found quiet, UK
counterparts such as Bath, Liverpool and
Newcastle are heaving under the strain of
rerouted stag and hen groups, drawing
local ire. Dublin banned groups of ten or
more in establishments in Temple Bar,
and York is set to launch restrictions to
limit large stag and hen parties in its bars
and pubs.
Boozed-up stag and hen parties abroad
have clearly had their last orders — and
that leaves those cities in much better
shape for the rest of us to enjoy.TIME’S UP
FOR THE
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times.co.uk/travelKATIE
GATENS
Digital Travel Editor
If it’s difficult for a family of
four to get away, would you
bother with a trip for 14?
In praise
of Paris