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Published: June 17th 2012
Girls in Traditional Czech dresses... I guess!
I think they enjoyed taking a photo much more with Thomas than with a girl like me! Note the heavy bags I'm carrying!My trip to Romania was now over and I was heading from Bucharest to Lisbon by way of Prague. I had expected that today was going to be spent waiting in airports or on airplanes as I travelled to the opposite side of Europe to visit our friend Maria in Lisbon. I was excited to be leaving Bucharest and get on with this next part of the trip, but Maria had emailed me last night and said that the Lisbon air traffic controllers were likely going to be striking when I flew in, so my flight may be delayed. If I had been flying straight to Lisbon from Bucharest I would have been extremely disappointed; as much as I liked Romania, I didn't want to spend any more time there. To my fortune, however, my stopover was in Prague, so I was secretly hoping for a bit of a delay.
The flight from Bucharest to Prague was only about an hour, and I originally only had two hours or so to wait until my connection. Not enough time to get out into Prague. BUT when I landed, just as Maria had warned, the air traffic controllers were on strike. So
Exploring Old town 1
Of course, since I didn't have a map or any information, I don't know the names of any of the following pictures! We just knew we wanted to find the river, and we did! my flight was delayed and I had 5 hours, and they even gave me about $20 in food vouchers to compensate me for this delay, which made it even better! I'm not one to sit in the airport between connections, so naturally I decided to go out and see the city. In fact, it was a beautifully sunny and warm day so that made it even more enticing. The bad thing though, is that I had to carry my backpack around with me the whole way, but it wasn't terrible.
Of course when I left customs, I had to figure out how I would get myself to the centre. Although I've always wanted to go to Prague, there was always somewhere else to go so I didn't even know where the airport was in relation to the city centre, or what there was specifically to see. I asked at one desk in the airport what was the easiest way to get to the old town and he described for me a journey that took multiple buses and trains. Without a map or any preparation, that was way too complicated, so I knew I had to find a better way
(not taxi because I was too cheap to pay the money). Before going out, I took out some of the Czech currency (which I don't even know what it's called, I was so unprepared). I think I took out $40 CAD, which gave me 1,000 Czech money.
I wandered in front of the arrivals hall and found this mini-bus service that went straight into the old town centre. Why didn't the guy tell me about this, it was so much easier than what he had said! I only waited for about 15 minutes for it to come. While I was waiting, I was approached by this German guy (Thomas), who started talking to me. At first you have the natural response of "who is this guy", but he turned out to be a very nice guy whose flight was also delayed. He had the same idea to do a quick walking tour of the city centre instead of sitting in the airport, so we took the bus and made a very efficient and fun tour of the city for about an hour and a half. We walked quickly, despite me lugging around my backpack and he had a bag
Exploring Old town 3
This is Thomas, my fellow stranded explorer! with two laptops. We got a real feel for the city, enough to know that we both want to return with our significant others (much easier for him though, since he's only an hour flight away).
If it wasn't for him, I probably would have stayed longer in the centre and missed my flight out (accidentally, as I'm the type to keep thinking, I have time, I don't need to go back just yet), but he had to catch an earlier flight and so it was a good idea to go with him to make sure I was on time. As it was, when we got back to the airport I had a moment of panic before I realized that they hadn't updated the delayed time on the departures board. Before leaving the city, we got some gelato because I needed to use that 1,000 Czech money for something and actually needed to break up the bill because the bus driver wouldn't give me change for it so I had to use euros for one way but needed change for the way back.
In the airport once we were through security, we had some time and some free
food vouchers, so we hit the pub and bought some dinner. He's really into geocashing, so once we finished dinner and had more time to kill, we decided to try and see if we could find one that was apparently hidden in the airport (that doesn't seem to be a good idea- hiding random objects in an airport). Unfortunately we tracked it as far as we could because it must have been hidden outside of security. Then it was time for him to go, but I still had to wait an hour and then another in the plane. Even though I arrived in Lisbon around 2am (thanks to Maria and her father who were waiting for me!), I had a really great time meeting a new friend and exploring a new city. It was a lot of fun sharing that adventure with someone else! Prague is beautiful and I'm definitely going to have to bring Mike back some day for longer than 1.5 hours.
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