Speculum Alchemiae — Attraction in Prague

Great small museum located in one of the oldest buildings in Prague. The visits are only guided, every half an hour, in English. The price of the ticket 200 Kr or 150 Kr for students (student card to be presented), the credit cards are accepted. The guide speaks perfect English and is super friendly and ready to answer all your questions, and I can assure you that you will have many questions, the tour is so interesting and fascinating but we know so little about alchemy and its secrets. There is a nice shop in the Museum which ells ELIXIRS, such as MEMORY ELIXIR, LOVE POTION, youth elixir and golden elixir. All are prepared following ancient recipes in a Benedictine Abbey near Brno, and confectioned in the prettiest glass and very cute boxes. Very nice, especially as a gift! The love potion and memory elixirs are based on WINE with some well known herbs, so this is a real staff that can only make you feel better. Golden elixir is expensive, and I personally would not drink it, it is high percentage of alcohol and contains golden flakes, but it is very BEAUTIFUL and could easily decorate your room or be a wonderful present. The love potion is also based on wine and herbs, so pretty safe. The tour lasts 30 minutes, you start in a room on the upper floor, and after an introduction, pass the hidden door in a bookcase to go down to the laboratories. It is very interesting to learn that all these laboratories and RECIPES written on the parchment and hidden in a metal box, were found by chance, in 2002 , when Prague was flooded heavily and some of the walls crashed to reveal the secret passage to 2 or 3 tunnels which lead to the center of the city and even to the Prague Castle, so it is a LONG tunnel of almost 2,5 km !!! The laboratories were separate for producing wine and alcohol, as a base for elixirs, the room for combining spirits with herbs, the storage room and the room for producing glass to keep the elixirs. You will be able to see all of these laboratories and it is so genuine and fantastic! HIGHLY...

This was nice to do something a bit different and learning about some unique history, but it could have been better, although it does seem like they are listening to feedback from some other reviews with things like capped group sizes definitely in place now. You sign up to a timeslot which is every half hour, but it seems they can run quite late, we started 15-20 minutes late and the group after us would have started about 25 minutes late. I did note that the ticket seller was warning people buying tickets for later slots that "it might be 10 minutes late" (we were already 15 minutes late to start our tour so that was pretty optimistic), so maybe the tours were on time until the one before ours as we didn't get a warning. It is nice that they still want you to get your time on the tour when you start late, but our group was all ready and waiting to go into the lower level/second half of the tour (nobody was taking anymore photos and people were all just standing looking at the guide) and for some reason our guide made us wait another 5+ minutes upstairs. I know we're privileged to have experiences in English in other countries, but even as a native English speaker with extensive experience with non-native English speakers, I found it very hard to understand the guide due to her strong accent and difficulty pronouncing some words. I think they had some printed notes in at least one language other than English, so if your English is only ok it might be worth asking if these notes are in a better language for you and reading them as you go around instead. There's definitely much worse ways to spend your time and money in Prague, I'd still...

Poor training of staff. The 4 of us walked in to have lunch. Place was busy so we said we will wait for a table. The hostess/waitress said it will be about 30 mins, but we need to wait outside. There was another couple waiting before us. After a while lots of people started coming in, so we got nervous and walked in. She sat down another couple groups. When I asked her how come she hasn’t gotten us. She asked who we spoke to to say we were waiting. I nearly lost it, and said it was her! She said she thought someone else sat us down. Place is a complete mess! She could have fixed it, but proceeded to tell us that this isn’t her job, and that there is nothing she can do. I have her a few solutions which she ignored. Never met such rude person in a service industry, and I’ve been to 6 continents! Once she sat us down, after a solid 10 min of telling her we are not leaving until she does. She doesn’t give us time to look through the menu. So we order drinks and say we will be ready to order food in a few minutes. She walks away, sends another waitress who comes to take our order, so we try to give her one, to which she says they are not serving food right now. Overall a horrible experience by two girls who should never be working in a service industry, who don’t know how to be humble and admit they made a mistake, not to mention their inability to fix it! Attached picture of a girl who...