Prague update from Andrew

I've been working off and on to write about my trip here in Prague, but I haven't had a whole lot of free time. I finally got a chance to finish things up this afternoon and post it. So here goes a summary of my trip so far...

Day 1 (Saturday)
Travel to Prague was an adventure. It was Friday the 13th when I took off. I didn't sleep very well the night before I left so I wasn't exactly running on all cylinders all day on Friday. On the way to the airport I told Liz that I felt a little nervous and that I didn't normally feel that way before trips. Maybe it was a premonition. All in all, the trip over went fine. I'm making it sound like the plane crashed and I had to paddle a row boat to Europe. In reality, I forgot to check my bag all the way to Prague originally and the plane was very uncomfortable from RDU to London. They were able to find my bag and check it to Prague before I left RDU so that was awesome. There wasn't much to do about the uncomfortable plane except to grin and bear it. Just meant that I didn't get much sleep on the way to London. And airplane sleep is never good sleep, at least for me. Maybe 30 or 40 minutes at a stretch before you wake up confused and sore.

We had a long layover in London and it was uneventful. We did have to go through security again after we landed even though we had just gotten off the plane and never left a secure zone. But it was just walking through a metal detector and having your bag scanned. We didn't have to change terminals at Heathrow which was nice. The strangest thing was that they had a huge waiting area in the middle of the terminal where you had to wait until they posted the gate for your flight. They posted the gate right before boarding time so that was kind of strange. I did get to eat a Bounty bar for breakfast so that was pretty awesome!

I slept pretty hard on the flight to Prague from London. It was only an hour and a half flight but I ended up sleeing for about half of it. I got my bag with no problem from baggage claim. Transportation to the hotel had been arranged so there was a guy holding a SchoolDude sign outside baggage claim. We ran into about half of the KL team at the gate in London so we had a pretty good group of us on the flight.

After checking in we walked around down on the square for a little bit and took in some of the sights. There were street vendors with little stands where they were cooking ham, sausages, and bread that also sold beer. I had a beer and then went back to the room and took a nap for about an hour.

A group of us, I guess 11 or 12 in total, went out to supper. We found a place that was recommended and had an awesome meal. I got to drink Pilsner Uquell which was one of my goals here. It was good! One of the unique things they eat here is what they call pig's knee. It's essentially the leg of pig from the joint down. They do cut off the hoof so you don't have to see that. They slow roast it and it's really good! I didn't get that this time but a lot of people in the group did. I ended up getting a schnitzel that was really good.

After supper we went to a place called the Propaganda Bar. It had a lot of propaganda posters from the Communist days. Kind of interesting. We had a beer and then called it a night.

Day 2 (Sunday)
Sunday the only thing we were doing was a half day city tour. I thought it was going to be a walking tour but we ended up riding a bus for most of it. We walked around the square here in Old Town and the tour guide told us about the clock and the church here in the square. Then we got on a bus and rode to Prague Castle. On the way the guide would tell us about various famous buildings that we passed. We walked around Prague Castle for about an hour. I tried to take a lot of pictures on Monday but the battery in the camera died after a while.

The tour included lunch and we went to an awesome place to eat. I hope we can find it again because I'd love to eat there some more. They brewed their own beer and it was a really good dark beer. We had a really good soup as a first course, then some smoked pork with dumplings (which are like pieces of bread, really), and an apple strudel for dessert.

After the tour I took a nap and then we meet to go get some drinks. We went to a place that was a boat on the river. It was permanently docked. I had some more Pilsner Urquell and then we went to dinner.

We went to supper at an Italian place called Club Architecture. At least that was the English name. I can't begin to say or spell the Czech name. Czech is a really hard language. Nothing sounds like it reads. After supper I headed to bed.

Day 3 (Monday)
Monday was the first day of meetings. Our meeting room was in a restaurant. It was an old wine celler (built in the 14th century) that had the most uncomfortable chairs in it. It was like going down to the dungeon and sitting on a medieval torture device. The meetings were fine, but it was a long day. We started at 7:30 AM and went until 6:00 PM, although we did get a 2 hour lunch.

We ate supper on another boat restaurant. It was an Italian place again. I had a really good pizza but it took a really long time to get my food. The service was really, really slow. Then on top of that, they messed up my order so they had to go back and cook my pizza after everyone else got their food.

We went out after supper and bought some cigars. I got a nice Cuban Montecristo #2. We were going to go to a bar and smoke them and have some beer but we were all tired so we lost momentum and went back to the hotel.

Day 4 (Tuesday)
Another long day of meetings. 7:30 AM to 6 PM again.

After the meetings we went out to supper and found a place that had cheap beer and awesome food. I should say that they beer here is really cheap anyway. Usually on the order of $2 to $3 for .5 liters of beer. This place had .5 liters of beer for 29 crowns which is about $1.50. I got one of the pig's knees here and it was awesome. There's a good amount of meat on there.

The CEO went out with us that night and ended up picking up the tab at supper. We came back to the hotel and had some beer and he picked up that tab, too. That was cool!

Day 5 (Wednesday)
Wednesday I went for a run with one of my co-workers. Felt nice to get some exercise after just eating all this good food and drinking beer. We just ran for 30 minutes. Then it was back to meetings all day.

After the meetings we went back to supper at the place we went the night before. We thought it was so good then that we wanted to try it again. The food was still really good but about halfway through the meal a tour group came and sat in the room we were in. They were really, really loud. They were Spanish and were yelling Spanish back and forth to each other and had some really loud toasts. Somebody had a decibel measuring app on their iPhone and pulled it out. It was over 100 decibels in that room!

After supper we decided to walk around and find a place that served Budvar. It's the original Budweiser. We found a place pretty close to the hotel and had a couple of Budweisers. Definitely better than the US version but it wasn't the best beer I've had since I've been here.

Day 6 (Thursday)
Today I went running by myself in the morning. Did another 30 minutes, although I didn't have a watch and didn't really know how long I had been gone. I guess my internal clock is pretty good!

Today was the last day of meetings and we wrapped up around 5 PM. We're meeting for supper at 7 PM so I finally had some time to write about my trip.