Hi, it’s Christina –
Greetings from Prague,
Czech Republic! It is now 6 am on Friday morning, at least I think it’s Friday,
the brain is a little foggy at this point.
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| Still awake and ready to leave on our adventure. |
Wednesday, Paulie’s
birthday, mom and I got dropped off at Newark Airport around 3:45, breezed
through security, and were at our terminal gate, waiting for the 6:25 plane, by
4:10. Not exactly sure why we needed to be at the airport by 4:00 for a 6:30 flight,
I think it may be a ploy by the airports to get you there early so you have
nothing to do while you’re waiting, so you spend money. Well, all they got out
of me was $4.50 for a water – which, of course, while juggling my bags to get
on the plane, I forgot. UGH.
Since all of the other
passengers heeded the two hour early warning, our British Airways flight took
off twenty-five minutes early. How cool was that! They passed out the best
pretzels – these tiny sour cream and onion ones – I wish I had snapped a
picture of them so I could get them again. Hopefully they’ll have the same ones
on the return flight.
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| Yeah, I'm the world's worst selfie taker |
The flight wasn’t full, so
I moved over two seats, and my mom, who was sitting with two other people moved
over by me. If I was a little smarter, and a little more selfish, I would have
snagged a whole row like some of the other folks did, this way I would have
been able to lay down and maybe get more than the 17 minutes of sleep I got.
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| Yummy & he knows how to plate a dish! |
I did get to watch Burnt –
the Bradley Cooper movie where he’s a chef. It was rather enjoyable, and had
several parts where I caught myself laughing out loud and quickly covered my
mouth to muffle the sound so I wouldn’t wake the folks who were actually
sleeping.
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| Heathrow |
We had a nice tail wind,
and got to London early, a little too early, because Heathrow won’t allow
planes to land before 6:00 am, so we had to circle a while before we could
land. Now, not for nothing, but Heathrow is a fairly major international hub.
Wouldn’t you think A) the place would be a little nicer, and B) their baggage
inspection area would run a lot more efficiently? The airport, or at least
terminal 3 – which was nowhere near where we landed - is a maze of drab corridors
– picture a 1950s insane asylum, yeah, that bad. The inspection area had maybe
six people manning it, and when each and every container containing liquid,
paste or gel – even containers at or under the allowable size – are inspected, and
you have multiple planes dumping out at the same time, sixty inspectors would
have a hard time keeping up, let alone six.
It was a bit of a cluster, and
there were countless people complaining because they missed their connecting flights
because of the inspection delays. I felt bad because mom and I were the 5th
and 6th bags to be inspected, and we had a 4 hour layover. If I had
known when we got in line, I would have let the people with an earlier flight
to go ahead of me. Wouldn’t you think there would be an express lane or
something specifically for travelers who have a small window between flights?
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| Waiting for the bus at the Vienna Airport |
We get on our flight for
Vienne (Wein), and mom promptly falls asleep – good for her, but I’m a bit
envious. At this point, my back had just about enough of sitting, and bless the
flight attendants hearts, they fully understood, and allowed me to stand in the
back of the plane with them. Sarah & Rebecca were positively delightful,
and made the two hour flight go by in a flash.
So far, from what I’ve
seen of Wein, I’m not all that impressed. I’m hoping the area we see from the
ship will be much improved over the dirty, grimy, industrial area around the
airport.
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| The bathroom on the bus - Let's just say that was an adventure and leave it at that. |
We did not have passage
booked from Wein to Prague because our travel agent said it was much cheaper to
do it on site, so after a bit of confusion, we were able to, for 22 Euro, get
on a bus, but the bus only took us part of the way. We had to get off in some
town and wait for the actual bus that was going all the way to Prague.
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| Hoping the rain doesn't really come. It's chilly enough with- out it! |
Here’s where my first
encounter with some drama occurred – the bus was about to leave, and mom is
nowhere to be found. She was cold, so she said she was going to wait inside the
door. Fine, no big deal. I should have known better, because the door she was “waiting”
in led to a mall. The bus was closing its doors, I screamed for it to stop,
screamed for my mom to hurry up when I finally saw her coming – and we were
able to catch the bus. Thank God, because if we had missed it, the next bus
wasn’t coming for a few hours and we would have had to purchase new tickets.
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| I know it's hard to see, but I'm pretty sure this is a nuclear power plant. YIKES! |
This was around 4:00 pm –
the 36 hour mark of being awake. Yeah, I’m twitching at this point. On the bus,
we have wifi, but not until we hit the Czech Republic. The moment wifi kicks
on, I go in search of an address for our hotel, because nowhere in the
paperwork sent by our travel agent is there an actual physical address for our
hotel – and, of course, everyone we ask has never heard of Hotel Orien –
probably because I was saying Oh-rye-on and over here they pronounce it
Or-ree-on.
The “cruise director” on
the bus (I don’t know what else to call her – flight attendant, maybe – she helped
the travelers, made them drinks, handed out headphones), Lucy, plopped down in
the seat next to me, and helped me search for the hotel. Then when she finally
found an address (we had to check several sites, and finally the address was
listed on a review site), she screen printed everything from her phone and
emailed it to me.
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| The view from one of the many windows in our hotel room. |
Initially, upon arrival in
Prague, we were going to make our way via the metro, to the train station to
purchase our tickets for our Sunday transfer to Budapest, then take the metro
two more stations, get off and walk the few blocks to our hotel, but by the time
we arrived, WE WERE DONE. There was no way either of us were walking more than
a few feet dragging our luggage.
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| Our kitchen |
So, we opted for a cab. I
had heard horror stories about the cabs in Prague – thankfully I do not have
one to add to them. The price was 300 Korun (pronounced Crown) – roughly $12.50.
The driver, Alexi, was great. He pointed out good restaurants – ones the locals
like, told us about several tourist traps to avoid (hopefully some of his tips penetrated
my sleep deprived brain), and didn’t drive like the maniac all the trip advisor
sites claimed all Czech taxi drivers did. God must have known I wouldn’t have
been able to handle any more stress, so he put Alexi in our path. THANK YOU!
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| That little hobbit bed in the corner is mine. |
We arrive at our fully
booked hotel. Our room only has one bed, but the staff scrambled and found
another bed to put in the room – it’s about as comfortable as you’d expect a
rollaway to be, but at that point I really didn’t care. Mom and I dropped off
our bags, then went to Vini Vidi Vici, one of the restaurants Alexi
recommended, had some pumpkin soup and bread for dinner, then came back and
went to sleep.
Not sure what’s on the agenda
for today, but I’ll be sure to let you know all about it tomorrow morning.
Until then, have a
WONDERFUL day & happy writing.
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