Eastern Europ - Day One

What can I say, if you’ve been on more than a couple of overseas flights they pretty much become just transportation. And if you can afford to buy yourself a reasonable dinner and drink in real life there isn’t going to be much that’s exciting on most of the airlines Business Classes these days going across the Atlantic.
This is true for our Swissair flight from Chicago to Zurich. Smooth, uneventful, orderly (very Swiss like). Once in the air, we are promptly and efficiently given dinner. Everyone is bedded down (literally everyone in the Business Class cabin) within a few minutes of finishing dinner. Breakfast is waiting when you awake.

View from the waiting room in Zurich Airport

Changing planes in Zurich is a breeze as the airport is relatively small and easy to get around. Prague is even smaller. It never ceases to amaze me how lax the security is when one travels from small city in US to small city in Europe. Our luggage has been checked through all the way from Albuquerque to Prague. The only passport check once we leave the US is a cursory look in Prague.

Wife's new jacket and camera bag waiting in Zurich

We catch a taxi to the apartment just as our travel companions and tour organizers, Al the Armenian and his wife Sandy are walking up to the apartment from a short grocery-buying trip. Like a lot of European flats, especially older ones or ones in smaller buildings, there are no elevators. This is fine accept we are on the third floor which in Europe means the fourth floor – the first floor being the ground floor not the first floor. Never mind, it means carrying your bags up a lot of spiral staircase steps.

The Street in Front of the Apartment

Dreaded Spiral Staircase

Our entire trip has been organized by the professionals at Cruise One, Al and Sandy
Here Wife discusses with them the unforeseen issue related to the stairs
"Let's see Mrs. de-I the contract calls for a standard fare if there are no more than two stairs to be climbed. so i fyou have two extra ones plus the one to the loft that will be a deduction of ...."

The apartment is quite nice with on two levels with the upper level devoted to a master suite type of room with a great view of the city. Sandy is dead tired and takes a nap, The rest go to a number of local stores to stock up on some staples.
Question – How good does a $3 bottle of local wine cost?
Answer – About as good as you’d expect.

View out the window of our apartment

View into the apartment from the porch

Finally dinner. As we’re all tired we go next door to a local bar and restaurant. We ordered a wide variety of plates ranging from one with three kinds of pork (roasted, sausage, and ham) with cooked cabbage and dumplings, to roasted pork tenderloin with potatoes in garlic cream sauce, to a Czech style goulash, cold codfish liver appetizer (guess who ordered that) and deviled toast with cheese (which was totally different than what we thought – more like a stewed dish on crispy toast). Lots of fresh rye bread to accompany the meal along with wine and beer. The total with tip was about $38.