Destination Prague

A big thanks to the Wayne family for getting us to the Minneapolis airport! Normally we start our trips out of our home city of Nashville but we tied this one in with a holiday visit to family in Wisconsin. They were extremely generous in spending part of their Christmas hauling us to the airport.

Traveling on Christmas

I don’t think Devin or myself have ever actually traveled on Christmas day before so this was a new experience. The airport felt a little less busy than usual but there were still quite a few people using Christmas as a travel day. Our flight had connections in O’hare and Munich before we reached our final destination in Prague.

Nuts on Clark

Whenever we go through O’hare the assigned gates are always at opposite ends of the airport. This has enabled us to memorize many sections of the airport. Including all the locations of Nuts on Clark. (There’s one in each terminal). The caramel and cheese popcorn mix is amazing. Highly recommended.

Business class

As a Christmas present to ourselves we purchased business class tickets for our flights. Our United 777 had the lie flat beds with pretty good privacy. The welcome package on our seats had 2 blankets, 2 pillows, and a kit with lotions and balms. Devin was excited by the pillow and wanted to know if we could take it. According to the business class code of conduct manual this is frowned upon.

There was so much food given to us on the plane. Dinner started off with a starter salad and cold duck slices. Then we had the choice of short ribs, Thai chicken, and two other items. Dessert was either ice cream, cheese cake, or cookies. I had to skip dessert because I was too full.

The flight was very nice and we arrived in Munich much less tired than we normally do on Trans-Atlantic journeys. We had three hours to kill in Munich and after doing a couple of laps we found some reclined chairs to people watch.

Our flight to Prague was pretty short and I think I slept through most of it. Since we did passport control in Munich all we had to do was get our luggage and find public transport.

Public Transport

We’ve watched a lot of videos on Prague from the Honest Guide and Devin knew exactly how to get to the metro via a bus. The transit tickets in Prague are for all modes of transit for a given period of time.

I was letting Devin handle buying the tickets but I realized that she was struggling with our credit card working with the machine. I noticed the mobile phone payment sign on the ticket machine and made my first mobile payment ever for bus tickets. No idea why it would not accept our card but the mobile payment worked fine. We made it to our hotel in one piece and took a nap.

Christmas markets

Our main reason for coming to Prague was to experience the Christmas markets. We awoke from our nap and decided to grab some food and experience the markets in Old Town Square.

There are so many stands for Trdelnik or chimney bread and even though we knew that it is not traditional Czech food we had to try it. While it looks very cool it isn’t worth the money. The lights and the tree were very pretty and we got some mulled wine and apple cider. The mulled wine was very pungent and hard to drink without making a face.

I did find a method that worked by not breathing at certain times during the drinking process. In retrospect, if the libation you’re drinking requires a method so it doesn’t make your eyes water maybe change drinks.

We also tried sausage and Langos. Langos is a circular piece of fried dough with various toppings. Ours had ketchup, garlic, and mozzarella cheese. I could have done without the ketchup but it wasn’t bad.

After finishing our wine (I had to prove my method was working!) we headed back to the hotel to sleep.