Saturday 20 July 2013

Thursday 18 July. Prague A

This last few days have brought back memories of English lessons at school. "A Tale of Two Cities" by Dickens. We've had the best of times and the worst of times.

Our plane was delayed out of Cologne and we arrived in Prague just before 9pm.

Prague has a first class integrated public transport system.We could get from the airport to our hotel via bus, metro and tram, using one ticket, valid for 90 minutes, for just 32 Czech crowns. (One English pound or two NZ dollars). Compare that to London! The good part.

We queued for about 8 minutes to buy tickets, we had no small change to buy tickets from a machine. Just as we reached the ticket kiosk the guy inside decided he was closing for the night. There were at least a dozen people behind us in the queue.  He told us to buy tickets on the bus. Knowing what bus drivers can be like I approched a women at a supermarket checkout nearby and she understood my sign language and gave me change for a 100 crown note.

We went to queue for a number 100 bus to Zlicin at the end of metro line B. Luckily a couple of Japanese tourists in the queue pointed out a ticket m/c we hadn't seen and I was able to buy tickets.

When the bus arrived a couple in front of us tried to board the bus and purchase tickets  from the driver but they were turned away by him and told to get tickets outside. He then drove off. They would have had at least a 20 or 30 minute wait for the next bus.

We took the bus to Zlicin and then the metro to Charles Square from where we walked to our hotel, Botel Rasek, a boat on the Vlatava. We arrived about 11pm. It was a pleasant, if somewhat long walk (45 minutes) from the metro stop. Normal, sane people, would use a tram. However after five hours sitting on a coach and two one hour flights it was nice to do a bit of walking.

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