Morning dawned, gray and dreary, on our first full day in Prague. And the lessons continued...
1) When visiting a large city (about 1.3 million), be sure to take full advantage of all forms of public transportation. We made the mistake of taking the Metro to an area near Old Town Square and then walking instead of using the buses and trams to get closer to our destination. We enjoyed a leisurely stroll from the Metro station to Prague Institute, where Megan had her classes, and around various sites downtown to one of her favorite lunch spots - Club Architect. We enjoyed a tasty, authentic Czech meal at a reasonable price (88Kc = $6) at the quaint underground cafe,.
2) Don't be a guy - ask directions! I kept thinking, "I remember, it's just down this street!" Unfortunately, in the Old Town area, 'this street' looks just like 'that street' - so we ended up spending way too much time wandering in search of a particular site I wanted to share with Mom. By the time we drug ourselves to the bus stop to head back to the hostel for a rest before dinner, we had spent about six hours on our feet and were all three exhausted.
3) Another large city lesson - beware of pickpockets! Of course, we knew this. We'd heard plenty of stories of cameras, passports, and wallets stolen without the victim having the slightest hint when or where, let alone, who was responsible. In our case, it was a little less subtle than that. As we boarded the bus, Megan got on first and I hung back to make sure Mom could make it up the tall step on to the bus, but as I took her arm to help her, a young man jumped in front of her and stopped, asking in Czech where the bus went. I was totally oblivious, but Megan must have recognized that something was amiss because she started waving him off and yelling, "ne" (no) at him. Meanwhile, a couple of other young men were crowding in behind us and I naively thought they were also trying to get on the bus, but Mom recognized they were a little too close for comfort and shouted for them to get away. They left and we got on the bus, congratulating ourselves that we all still had our wallets - until we got back to the hostel and realized they had lifted the camera from mom's jacket pocket. We were so devastated - we had spent those six hours chronicling our trip and now all those pictures were gone. We eventually bought some disposable cameras and took some pictures with our phones, but the quality was not very good...hence the reason there are few pictures accompanying this blog!
4) Ask whether tour packages include all beverages or only alcoholic ones...while we were downtown, we had booked and paid for a dinner cruise on the Vltava River which included drinks and cost about $75 each. We discovered when we boarded the cruise, that it included alcohol, but not other drinks - not even water! So we ended up paying an extra $10 or more each in order to have water with our meal. Nevertheless, this was probably the highlight of our time together in Prague - the cruise was lovely as we passed swans and castles, the Dancing Building and Charles Bridge. We traveled well south of the city, using a lock to travel upriver past a shallow fall, and then returned in the course of about 3 hours. The views of the city and the countryside just outside the city were spectacular. We were even surprised to see a riverside RV park along the banks.
5) Inquire about road work or other changes to the public transportation routes (learned this lesson again in London!) It turned out that the bus we had used to get within a reasonable distance to the riverboat did not run in the opposite direction due to road work that was underway. Consequently, it was another mile hike back to the Metro station. My poor little feet ache just thinking about it!
Needless to say, we all tumbled into bed exhausted once again.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Tales from the TRIP
To fully appreciate these tales, you probably need just a little background. First, the TRIP was a sixteen day European adventure with my 70-year-old mother. Before you think that must mean a 70-year-old pace for the trip, you should understand that my mom is pretty sassy for her age. She walks a mile on a treadmill pretty much every day, zips around the lake on her jetski with her Flying Aqua Babes buddies, and travels cross-country in an RV at least a few months out of the year. This was her third major trip within six months to include cruising across the Atlantic and hiking to the top of Alhambra.
Regardless of all that, we learned some valuable lessons along the way:
1) Always request handicap assistance when changing airplanes. OK, I'm not talking to you 20-somethings out there that can sprint through the airport carrying your 49.5 pound luggage. But for those of us who have celebrated a birthday that involved black balloons and signs reading "Over the Hill" - don't be embarrassed, just do it! The connection at Logan Airport alone would have taken us the entire five hour layover to get from one terminal to the next if we hadn't had a gent wheeling mom along at light speed. (Thankfully, she held on to both our carry on bags and I walked on the people-mover or I wouldn't have been able to keep up with him.)
2) If you're flying for more than 4 hours, fly first class. No, we didn't do this, but I made Mom promise that if she ever does this again she will - I don't care what the cost difference, when you have two titanium knees, having to wedge yourself into that tiny space for that long should be against the law. Nevermind if you have someone trying to climb over you or if you have to climb over someone.
3) Heathrow is not an airport, it's an air-tropolis. The distance from Terminal 4 to Terminal 5 is further than the distance across the city of Raleigh I'm pretty sure. Oh, and if you're connecting through Heathrow, you definitely want to print out your boarding passes for your connecting flight before you leave home, so you can check your bags through to your final destination because if you have to get your bags, go through customs and re-check your bags again, you better have a week to spend at the airport.
4) When booking travel, try to keep the sum total of all hours in an airplane or airport under 24. We managed this, just barely, and I really think if we had another two hours in a plane, there might have been an incident involving airline security. Not mentioning any names, I'm just sayin'.
5) Check the size of the aircraft you will be flying on when crossing a large body of water, like, say, an OCEAN. I've flown overseas before...always had two aisles with a couple seats on the sides and 4-5 seats in the middle - this was 3 seats on either side of a single aisle....and when the air got rough, it was like riding the Dominator at Kings Dominion - only no big restraining bar to hold on to. And the people around us didn't appreciate me screaming and raising my hands over my head.
6) Upon arrival at your final destination, do NOT let your 19-year-old daughter convince you to save a buck by taking public transportation, as in, "We take the bus to the Metro station, and the Metro to the tram stop, and the tram lets us off just a block from the hostel." This is where the incident almost occurred...fortunately, she saw the dangerous glint in our eyes and agreed to a taxi before we had to resort to extreme measures.
And we learned all of that just on Day 1! More Tales from the TRIP to follow....
Regardless of all that, we learned some valuable lessons along the way:
1) Always request handicap assistance when changing airplanes. OK, I'm not talking to you 20-somethings out there that can sprint through the airport carrying your 49.5 pound luggage. But for those of us who have celebrated a birthday that involved black balloons and signs reading "Over the Hill" - don't be embarrassed, just do it! The connection at Logan Airport alone would have taken us the entire five hour layover to get from one terminal to the next if we hadn't had a gent wheeling mom along at light speed. (Thankfully, she held on to both our carry on bags and I walked on the people-mover or I wouldn't have been able to keep up with him.)
2) If you're flying for more than 4 hours, fly first class. No, we didn't do this, but I made Mom promise that if she ever does this again she will - I don't care what the cost difference, when you have two titanium knees, having to wedge yourself into that tiny space for that long should be against the law. Nevermind if you have someone trying to climb over you or if you have to climb over someone.
3) Heathrow is not an airport, it's an air-tropolis. The distance from Terminal 4 to Terminal 5 is further than the distance across the city of Raleigh I'm pretty sure. Oh, and if you're connecting through Heathrow, you definitely want to print out your boarding passes for your connecting flight before you leave home, so you can check your bags through to your final destination because if you have to get your bags, go through customs and re-check your bags again, you better have a week to spend at the airport.
4) When booking travel, try to keep the sum total of all hours in an airplane or airport under 24. We managed this, just barely, and I really think if we had another two hours in a plane, there might have been an incident involving airline security. Not mentioning any names, I'm just sayin'.
5) Check the size of the aircraft you will be flying on when crossing a large body of water, like, say, an OCEAN. I've flown overseas before...always had two aisles with a couple seats on the sides and 4-5 seats in the middle - this was 3 seats on either side of a single aisle....and when the air got rough, it was like riding the Dominator at Kings Dominion - only no big restraining bar to hold on to. And the people around us didn't appreciate me screaming and raising my hands over my head.
6) Upon arrival at your final destination, do NOT let your 19-year-old daughter convince you to save a buck by taking public transportation, as in, "We take the bus to the Metro station, and the Metro to the tram stop, and the tram lets us off just a block from the hostel." This is where the incident almost occurred...fortunately, she saw the dangerous glint in our eyes and agreed to a taxi before we had to resort to extreme measures.
And we learned all of that just on Day 1! More Tales from the TRIP to follow....
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