布拉格遊記（1）

I just noticed that this is the 100th post in this blog.



Prague,

I haven't heard too much about this place until I heard the song by Jay Chow. The whole idea for this trip was a way to "celebrate" my dad's retirement. I had picked out 7 cities which we can go within a reasonable money and time budget. Towards the end, Moscow, Prague and Madrid came up and Moscow dropped out because it requires visa. Eventually my dad picked Prague and Prague it is. Because I had been super busy the few weeks before the trip so we havn't done much research, but with 5 days and 4 nights there, we can afford to get the info at the hotel and plan our trip with the first day.

We have an afternoon flight so I try to restrain myself from eating too much for lunch because I expect to enjoy a big dinner. Comparing to Norway, food in every country is always better and cheaper.



My usual practice is to get some local currency before the flight in case I can't find any minibank that works with my card at the destination. However, the currency exchange at the airport has just sold out the Czech Crowns and I remember Hana said that it is better to use Euros there, so instead I got myself 200 euros, in 50 euro bills, plus I have some euros from before so I believe it should be enough.



The flight is only half full so the 4 of us occupied 6 seats and it gave us a lot of room to move around. Since my previous two trips were domestic flights to Bergen that were 100% filled, I really appreciate the empty seats. Two hours later we arrived at Prague and the first objective is to secure the transportation to the hotel. I remembered from wiki travel that taxis are known for ripping people off, so I am trying to look for some alternatives. It turns out that there are several vans parked behind the taxis that are used to transport people to hotels from the airport, they are privately own and is actually not much cheaper (as I later found out, since I took taxi to the airport on my way home). The most annoying part is that they have 8 seats in the van and they wouldn't just drive with the 4 of us, insisting to fill the van as much as possible. After 10 min of waiting I told the driver that I will only wait 10 more minutes, and if he still don't drive, then we will take taxi instead. Somehow he managed to find 2 more tourists before the deadline and off we go.

It cost 480 kc for the trip between 1 to 4 people, since I only got 440 kc from 20 euros in the airport, I naturally pulled out the 50 Euro bill, and the driver looked so surprised and cannot offer me change, asking me if I have anything smaller. So at the end, I gave him all my kc in my waller plus a 2 euro coin. He drove off happily.



After settling down in the hotel, it is time for dinner and it happens to be a restaurant close by which serve some Czech cusines, and we decided to check it out. My eyes were glowing when I saw the meny, there are many meat dishes and the price is so cheap. The amount that was writting on the menu are either smaller or equal to the menu I see in Norway, except Czech crowns are worth only about 1/3 as much. So we stuffed ourselves for the price that could only buy me a dinner for 2 at most in Norway.



After dinner we decided to get some rest and get ready for tomorrow.