At 7:00 am Ken and Julie Ann departed the Phoenix Airport as they taxied past Air Force One. The Obama family was visiting Phoenix and the Grand Canyon. Your tax dollars at work! A 7:30 am Ken and Kay departed Billings. That afternoon we met up in Atlanta about 3:40. At 5:50 pm we departed Atlanta for Prague.

The plane was less than full and very quiet. The flight was great and we all got some sleep. We landed in Prague at 8:40 am on August 17th, 40 minutes ahead of schedule. We gathered our luggage and as we walked out of the baggage area, our driver Peter was just coming in the door holding up his sign with our name on it. Great timing! He took us directly to our apartment at 14 Librova in Prague. Our apartment is in a non tourist area of apartment buildings about 4 stories high. Our apartment of course is on the 4^th floor and there is no elevator. (Kay counted 96 steps) Our landlord Andrea met us at the door and led us up the 4 flights of stairs with Ken and Ken handling the luggage. Quite a workout for a couple of old guys.

The apartment is a 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom unit and is very comfortable. There is no air conditioning in most of the homes in Prague and it was about 85 degrees and 85% humidity when we got to the apartment. We opened the doors and windows and with a nice breeze going through and it cooled off nicely. The master suite is in a loft and a set of spiral staircase, but with a great view balcony. The apartment is adjacent to the Castle Square Area of Prague. It is built up on a hill overlooking all of Prague.

We all took about a 2 hour nap and at about 2 pm cleaned up and then headed to Old Town and Castle Square. We saw the Monastery Area with a lot of unique old structures many currently under repair. We then walked the streets of Old Town, visited Charles Bridge which is a local landmark and then on to Castle Square. We toured St. Peter Cathedral and then went to St. George Basilica but did not go in.

We wandered around those areas for hours, probably walking 5 or 6 miles and much of it uphill. The aging process makes these things harder than in days gone by. Most all of the streets are cobblestone and very unique. We then found out that Ken W’s cell phone that was supposed to work in Europe was not working properly—glitch #1. We called Verizon via Skype and they activated the phone and we were operational.

We arrived back to the apartment about 6 or so and then went to the little corner grocery store that is owned by a Vietnamese family. We stocked up on supplies for the apartment and took them home. Then we headed out to dinner just up the street at a neat little local restaurant that is not frequented by tourists. Its name Na Marjance and our waiter was Samucel (Czech). The four of us had 7 beers, a coke, two bottles of water and 4 dinners and it came to about $45 with tip. It would have been at least double that in the Old Town area with tourists.

After dinner we went back to the apartment and had wine on the upper balcony. Within a short time a fantastic lightning storm began over Prague. Have you ever tried to catch lightning on a camera without time-lapse features. It was at this time that we had our second glitch of the trip. Ken W was working on the Netbook computer and accidently spilled wine onto the keyboard; panic immediately set in as he did this in Ireland last year and it took 3 to 4 days for the computer to come back to life. We got out the hairdryer and began to dry it out. It was not working quite right, so we shut down, took the battery out and let it dry overnight.

Headed to bed about 11 pm and it was a great nights rest to recover from jet lag.

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