Sophistivacation

It was short, but sweet! We had to leave for the airport at midday so we didn’t have time to do very much; instead we had a relaxing breakfast and went a wander to The Palladium shopping mall. There are over 200 shops, I went into one and that was me, although it was nice to see C&A alive and kicking still! I clearly didn’t buy much so we headed back to the hotel to check-out and take a taxi to the airport. Now we had plenty of time, but with a delay to the taxi arriving, followed by horrendous traffic, we got to the airport 2 hours ahead of our flight. Normally this would be fine, we did manage to check in quickly, but the queue for passport control was terrible! We went through First and Business class, but this just happened to be the same queue as diplomats and crew, turns out crew take priority and they got to jump ahead of us! 40 minutes later, and we finally made it through, leaving no time to look through duty free or visit the airport lounge! First World problems! Thankful...

I’ve been to Prague twice before, but never made it to the castle, this time I was determined! We decided to book a walking tour which started on the other side of the Vltava river; we met the guide at 11am and after telling us to buy a tram ticket, we took the tram up the winding hill to the castle. As I mentioned in a previous post, it’s more a complex and not very ‘castle-like.’ The tour didn’t actually allow you into any of the buildings, only around the grounds. Thankfully, we had bought tickets ahead of schedule and were due to start our own sightseeing of the castle at 1pm. Back to our guide, James, he was an American who had moved to the Czech Republic as a Cheerleading coach for the Czech National team almost 16 years ago, he had since decided to stay but had given up the cheerleading. We started outside the castle at the Deer Moat, where game was kept so that Royals could shoot without leaving the castle.   Our next stop was to watch the Changing of the Guard, it is only ...

It’s like being back in Scotland! This was the only day forecast for rain so we thought we would book an underground tour, smart right?  The tour started at the office of the tour company, just a short walk from the Astronomical clock, at 10.30am; we had a lovely sleep and relaxed breakfast beforehand, and I was smart enough to ask for an umbrella before I left! We were told the tour guide was running 10 minutes late due to traffic, not really a problem for us, but I did mention to Iain that I hope she is running as she makes her way to us! I felt super guilty when a girl ran past us, halted just beside us, skidded, and nearly fell, before saying she needed to grab her keys! Turns out her name was Maggie, and she was a crazy techno fan with red hair! She was also totally into the medieval and gruesome parts of our tour! As I said, we booked this tour due to its ‘underground’ nature; unfortunately, we still had to walk overground to the underground places! The first stop was underne...