Thanks kovsie for all your information.

enjoyed your report but want to mention the travel tickets.they are printed in Czech and in English and on the back of exh one lets you know the various zones but unless you are going out of the main tourist area than the ticket will cover you for All trams and All metro journeys.the buses are where you need to check zones. if i am using buses in the further out zone i usually take a tram or metro to the last stop and transfer to the buses from there and pay any additional fees .
I also buy 24 hr passes that last for 24hrs from when you first validate them these cost 110kc and a very good value also handy if you are not sure how many journeys you will have in a day and saves you looking for ticket outlets or machines.
most Praguers have monthly passes (as i do for my home city public transport) and most savvy toursits buy the 24 hr passes and that is why you see so few people validateing their ticket,they do it once and it last the lenth of the ticket.
As to the ticket inspectors you just do not argue with them and they treat locals as harsh as they treat visitors.

Thanks unclegus - I should have asked while we were there. During our last two days I discovered that the ticket machines in city centre 'speaks' and prints English as well as Czech. In Kobylisy, where we stayed and bought most tickets, everything was in Czech only (if I remember correctly).

mr_go: what beautiful photos. It makes me want to go back tomorrow. So interesting to see the green trees and tulips in your photos. We were there when everything was bare and black ... which I also found lovely. You have a knack of finding an interesting angle from which to take each photo. Tx for sharing!

Kovsie... Thank you so much. Btw, at least half of those pictures are ms_go's. Probably the more interesting ones, anyway.