The District: Czech Village & New Bohemia — Attraction in Cedar Rapids

This area is a little treasure in Cedar Rapids. The newbo market has a combination of permanent businesses and incubator shops. An eclectic mix of restaurants, curio shops, an amazing brick oven pizza joint, a bar, coffee shop, butcher, bakery, and many niche shops. The market hosts many events like bingo night, puzzle competitions, and trivia. There is also a kitchen where they offer cooking classes through Kirkwood Community College. The neighborhood around it has restaurants, coffee shops, a bookstore, an art and music venue, and much more. Across the river, Czeck village is a little street a few blocks long with the same type of homie restaurants, a bookstore, second-hand stores, and coffee shops. There are many events during the year hosted on both sides of the river, such as festivals, yoga retreats, and bands. Easily a great place to spend a day, a weekend or just stop in for a quick bite or some shopping (you'll want to...

Just off 1-380 is a street known a Cedar Rapid's Czech Village. One block south of the national Czech/Slovak Museum, a visit here will round out your day. Start your taste at the bakery and grab a fresh baked Kolach or other authentic goods from this generational-owned family business. A stop at the meat market for made-to-order authentic Czech goulash served with hearty brown bread and Czech beer will fill you warmly in true Prague fashion. Use the rest of the afternoon to walk up to the Village fins Czech gift shop filled with beautiful glittering items hand-imported by the owner from Prague and then work your way down through the mixture of local arts and crafts shops, Czech antique shop and the several other treasure shops. Unfortunately, the district is not pure with bars and some inauthentic restaurants, but especially for those with Czech heritage you keep a keen eye you can experience a taste of Prague in Cedar...

As a Czech, I can speak to the overall authenticity of the area. The museum is high quality and it has a store with authentic Czech products. As far as food we had to search a little bit to find kolache - the Health Hut bakes them. The kolache are much closer to the real thing than anything I have seen in Minnesota and they have good Czech toppings like poppy seed and apricot. We had meals at 2 different restaurants - Little Bohemia is a traditional pub and it has goulash and pork dinner, both with dumplings. Those recipees seem pretty old-school. For a more modern take on Czech cousine, we went to Czech Town Station which had a couple meals that you might find at a contemporary restaurant in Prague including goulash and pork schnitzel with potato salad. There is a lot to be found here but you have to search a little...