Day 0 - Getting ourselves to Prague.
We drove to JFK in the pouring rain - until we got to Delaware, and then it stopped. We experienced the expected NYC rush hour on the Belt Parkway, which is still under construction as it has been for the last eleventy billion years. Literally I do not remember a time since I’ve had a driver’s license when that road has not been under construction.
Our flight was slightly delayed - the right engine had to be rebooted? That's not discomforting at all. But all was well - relatively easy 8 hours in the air. I think I managed to pull together 3 hours of sleep! This is close to a personal record!
Day 1
I'm just going to leave this here, because the first photo in the blog becomes the cover photo once it's published. This is the town square, much later in the evening:
Always entertaining using ATMs outside the U.S. - finding the button to switch to English, plus figuring out the exchange rate. Apparently there's about 20 Czk (koruna? krowns? still working on that) to the U.S. dollar. We didn't want to take out much, but it took a few tries to get down a small enough amount - 1,000 CZK. Even knowing that ATMs typically spit out minimum sized bills, we were still somewhat surprised by what popped out - a single 1,000 CZK bill. Hopefully it won't be too hard to break that.
Passport control was dreadful. Lines stood stock still for 5 to 10 minutes at a time. Changing lines didn't help - randomly line 3 was closed, forcing it to merge into line 4 (where we were standing). We also knew if we tried to change lines again, it would also magically come to a grinding halt. So we didn't bother, and waited it out.
Customs was a walk through - I can't remember the last time we had to fill out a paper customs form?
The Viking hosts were waiting for us - we were the next to last couple to pop out of Passport Control, with one more to go. Who never showed. After waiting quite a while in hopes that they might show up, we were escorted to the bus that took us to the Prague Hilton.
We met our tour director - Bennie (?). She ran through things rather quickly, but basically we’ve got a a couple of days in Prague on our own until Saturday, when we start go on our 5 hour walking tour.
The elevator system in this hotel is entertaining - you scan your room key at a panel by the elevator, type in the floor you want, and then the panel tells you which of the four elevators will take you to your floor, and only to your floor.
After that we pretty much crashed for several hours. At some point it was time to struggle our way to wakefulness, take showers, and find dinner.
And of course there’s always a bathroom story. The bathroom in this room is actually two rooms - there’s a separate room for the toilet. With an unhelpful mirror:
The shower is in another room - the shower itself is a tub shower, with tub walls that are half my height.
Entertaining bathroom!
After consulting with the concierge as to a plan of action, we set out to find the recommended restaurant that is off the town square. Bit of a challenge (green awning, behind a bunch of trees, to the left of the market), but we did find it.
"Typical Czech food" as described by the concierge - I had half a roasted duck with two kinds of sauerkraut (white and red), plus bread dumplings. This was huge:
Always up for a challenge, Andy helped me finish off the duck. I'm not really a meat-n-potatoes kind of person - there is no way I'll be able to keep this up!
On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at a supermarket and got some fruit and Diet Coke. Well, it’s Coke Zero because we are in Europe. And because we couldn't figure out how to get the mini-bar unlocked (to use it as a fridge), it will be warm Coke Zero. Yum.
We got here in one piece - successful Day 0 and Day 1!
Tomorrow the adventure really begins - the Jewish quarter.
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