During my recent trip to Prague (Czech Republic), I visited a place that I had been wanting to visit for a while: a Koh-I-Noor shop. I know it sounds weird, but it was one of my dreams while in Prague, because there are no shops from this brand in my country, and it is my favourite art brand, as I guess some of you know by now.

In Prague there are three shops: one is integrated within a Shopping Centre and it opens Monday to Friday with limited timetable. The shop I visited is in Na Prikope, opposite to the Gunpowder Tower, and opens the 7 days of the week from 10 to 8 pm. Because I travelled during the weekend, this was the only shop I could visit. I wish I could have also visited the Koh-I-Noor factory, which is in Ceske Budejovice (Budweis), but I am not sure whether it is open to the public, and it wasn’t easy to reach from Prague anyway.

This shop is the smallest one of the existent three. It doesn’t include a wide art selection (I couldn’t find everything I was looking for), but the products are displayed in a strategic way, so there is a little bit of everything. In the shelves you can find pastel or pencil cases, while in the plastic stands there are sharpeners and individual pencils. On top of the main table there are erasers, pens or mechanical pencils.

The prices in the physical shop are cheaper than in online shops, and I suspect this is because of the difference between the Czech Crown and the Euro, because the Koh-I-noor official site has similar prices than those in Amazon (the prices are in Euros), but buying with Czech crowns turned out more convenient. As an example, I bought a package of 12 Progresso coloured pencils that costed me 95 crowns (3,18 pounds), while in the official site are around 6 pounds and in Amazon UK are 7,30 pounds (8,13 dollars for Amazon US). It is also particularly adventageous to buy individual pencils in the physical shop, because it is always more expensive online (due to the shipping costs). I bought several Triocolor graphite pencils, a few Polycolor in metal colors, 2 erasers in the shape of a pencil, Aristochrom multi-coloured lead pencil, a big sharpener for Magic pencils, Progresso pencils both normal and fluorescent, Gioconda pastel pencils, some blender pencils and a tin of 24 Magic pencils: a great variety that costed me over 42 pounds, which is a fantastic price.

While in the shop, I ran into several tourists from different countries, which makes me realize the Koh-I-Noor brand is one attractive and well-known among art lovers. I was there a couple of times during the weekend and there were always customers, something I was delighted with. By the way: they sell beautiful wood pencil cases and giant erasers with Prague landscapes, which make them ideal as souvenirs.

To sum up, it was a nice experience I felt like sharing.