Sunday, August 18th, 2019
London, UK and Prague, Czech Republic
It’s 2:25pm GMT and my plane is landing in London. My head is foggy as I fumble around my carry-on for the European SIM that I purchased on Amazon. I find the card but left the tool at home and have no way to remove the existing SIM card. Eventually, I get off of the plane and have a little over 1 hour to kill before my next flight leaves. I wander around the international terminal for a while and then into Boots, the local travel store. There is an attendant dedicated to the cell phone section and I politely ask if he’ll help switch out my SIM card and he agrees. Yes! I am back online.
I check in to the American airport lounge and are immediately underwhelmed. It looks like a break room at a Nordstroms in Texas. I pour a teeny, tiny cup of coffee from the automated coffee machine and find a seat by the window. I spend my time listening to music, playing Pokemon Go, and making multiple trips back to the coffee machine. At 4:30 pm I make my way to the gate for my flight into Prague.
After a quick 2 hour flight, I have officially arrived! The immigration line is short, but it moves slowly. Once I grab my bag I start to look for my driver from the hotel. I make a few passes through the arrivals hall and am starting to get worried when I finally see a sign that reads “Sarah Hymes”. Sarah is my long-time friend and travel buddy and has already arrived at the hotel earlier today. I try to explain to the driver that I am ready to go, but she insists on waiting for the other two guests since the hotel room was booked for 3. Eventually, I convince her that the others have already arrived, but she still seems suspect as she drives me through Prague to the Hotel Liliova.
By the time I make it up to the hotel room, it’s 9:30pm. The lights are on but both of my friends are in bed, asleep. They groggily greet me and I announce that I’ll be eating dinner and drinking a beer before bed. I insist that they should both sleep, but Laura drags herself out of bed to join you. I am secretly grateful.
The block by our hotel is packed with cafes, all of which are still open. We pick an outside table and immediately order a cold beer. Laura orders fried cheese and I choose rabbit remoulade. We catch up and I can’t help but notice that Laura’s eyes are really red, I feel bad for dragging her out of bed, but later I’ll learn it was actually a reaction to the material on her new airplane pillow. Around midnight we turn in for the night. I plan on getting a full 8 hours of sleep before starting our first full day of vacation.
