In and around Prague

I'm a little behind in my blogging. We are actually just finishing up Paris and preparing to fly out first thing on Friday. More on that later. But, here's the scoop on the Prague portion of our journey...

We arrived into Prague shortly after 4:00am Monday. Struggling to shake off the cob-webs, we shuffled around the train station trying to figure out how to get to our hotel. We checked out the public transit but as good as the system is, it's not awake at 4am in the morning! So, we headed out the exit marked as the taxi stand. Same problem, no taxis awake either. But, we were "rescued" by a very helpful individual wearing a reflective vest and coveralls. Looking -- and sounding -- quite official, he assured us he would find a cab. Off he ran in one direction only to return a few minutes later and ran in another direction. Finally he beckoned us from yet another direction. This time, success! We tipped him and thanked him and learned in his parting comments that he "lived on the streets"...still not sure whether he was an employee of the train station or not. Regardless, he was a great help.

We arrived at our hotel about 20 minutes later. As you can image, our rooms were also still "asleep". So, we left our luggage with the front desk, sat down in the lobby for a bit then headed outside in search of Prague, a city just starting to wake up. We hit McDonald's (can you believe it!) a short time later around 7am. "Nourished", we began our touring of the city: a bus tour for the highlights, some time at the Prague Castle,  Wenceslas Square, Charles Bridge, the "Old Town", "New Town", and "Lower Town".We ended our very long day with an authentic Czech meal at a little restaurant in the old town.

We slept in a bit for our second day in Prague. We re-traced some of our steps from the previous day and picked up some souvenirs. Shortly after noon, Wendy and I bid goodbye to Warren and Jenny. We then packed up and prepared to head out to Paris.


Cleverly, we had redistributed our suitcase contents so the large case contained mostly bike stuff and souvenirs while the smaller of the two contained things needed for Paris. The small case crossed the airport scales at well under 23kg limit and it and trundled happily down the belt. The large case was up next: a shade over 26kg. With a punitive additional weight charge of 110 Euros and the small case gone, we had to figure out a way to lose 3kg into our carry-on. Wendy took some candy and her bike shoes, I took my bike shoes, a pair of jeans, and various travel-related brochures. Big bag up again: phew, 22.6kgs.

The next "challenge": get rid of 191 Czech Krowns (approx 8 Euros). Sadly, at the airport, this is not hard at all: 1 coffee americano (105 czk) + 1 chocolate bar (55 czk) + 2 little Moam candies -- Robbie, are you
reading?? (30 czk) + 1 krown into the tip jar. Voila! Poof gone! No more Czech currency. Paris, here we come.


Here's the pics