Viva la Furia Roja! A Trip Report - Prague, Poland, and Dresden 6/7-6/21 - Page 5 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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Before I get started, I just want to say CONGRATS to SPAIN!!!! Euro 2012 Champions!!!
And now without further ado....
DAY ONE: Thursday, June 7 “Planes, planes, and more planes”
Hello everyone! Since I already did my little pre-trip post regarding the who’s and why’s of my trip, I will just jump right in to the action! (Ok so there’s not so much action the first day since I spent 99% of it just sitting in one spot, but nonetheless, here we go!)
We got up around 7:00, as per usual, and I got DS(11) ready for school while Kyle got the dogs ready to head to the kennel. Kyle, DS, and three rowdy dogs all piled into his car, and they were off. I jumped in the shower and then packed a couple last minute things (I am always terrified I will forget my deodorant! ). Then I sat and chatted with DMiL for a few minutes while we waited for Kyle to return. DMiL had come to our house to stay with DS for the last couple days of the school year, then they were driving back down to her house in Tampa for the duration of our trip. Kyle came home, took a quick shower, packed up the car, and we were out the door in record time. Everything was going well. We drove over to my sister’s house. We were leaving my car at her house and she was driving us to (and picking us up from) the airport since it is right across I-95 from where she lives. She was ready to go when we got there, so we didn’t waste any time.
We got to the unloading part of the airport and said our goodbyes. As Kyle and I walked in towards the Delta kiosks to check our bags, I saw a very familiar face. A lady that Kyle worked with (and I knew from when I also worked at the office) was standing in the Delta line! It was too funny because of all the people in Savannah we know, we see this lady in the most random places (meaning places we are not at very often, like Rooms 2 Go or the airport LOL). So, we had a friend to chat with while we checked in. We quickly figured out that we were all on the same flight to Atlanta, because well, most of Delta’s flights from Savannah are through Atlanta. It was nice to have someone to talk to while we waited for our flight to board.
We didn’t have to wait all that long to board. Fortunately, Savannah is a really easy and quite small airport, so you don’t really need to be there the tons of time in advance that is usually suggested for busier airports. We showed up about an hour in advance and had more than enough time to check our bags and get through security before boarding. We got on the plane and unfortunately weren’t sitting anywhere near our friend, so we said goodbye. It’s such a short flight they usually don’t even turn off the seatbelt sign during the flight. They wouldn’t have turned it off during this flight in particular anyway, as there was quite a bit of turbulence due to clouds. It wasn’t anything terribly scary, just sort of constantly bumpy. We got into Atlanta right on time, then drove around the airport for about 20 minutes. (This is the beginning of a theme for this trip…) I was starting to wonder if we were driving back to Savannah because someone forgot something.
We finally reached our gate and were allowed off the plane. We had about a 2 hour layover before our flight to Amsterdam. Neither of us were really that hungry or anything, so we just made our way to the little tram and went to the terminal of our next flight. As much of an old dirthole as Atlanta airport looks like, it’s pretty easy to get around. We got to the gate and played watched the news on TV for a little while. Before too long, they were beginning to board. (The large planes that go overseas usually start to board about 50 minutes in advance since so many people have to get situated.) When our zone was called, we got on. This plane, I forget what kind it was, had the seat set up of 2-4-2. I am kind of obsessive about seats, so we’d chosen ours the second we booked our tickets (way in advance). We had an aisle and a window on one of the sides about half way back. They were good seats except for one thing (and this was something for every seat, not just ours). Since this was an older plane that they had adapted to have individual seat monitors, there were these lovely little mechanical boxes under each seat that took up about half of the foot room for the person sitting behind you. It also meant that my backpack would under no circumstances fit under the seat in front of me. That really annoyed me, because I almost always put my carry-on under the seat (just like they always encourage people to!). I like having it easily accessible during the flight and I have this irrational fear that if I have it in the overhead bin and go to get it out during the flight, we will hit turbulence right at that time and I will drop it on someone’s head. Does this happen often? Probably not. Could I see it happening to me? Absolutely. But alas, I had no choice and had to put my backpack above my seat. Fortunately on international flights since everyone gets a free checked bag, there is way more room in the overhead bins so it is not hard to find a place right near your seat to put your bag. Everyone was getting on and seemed about ready to go, and then we see this girl a row ahead of us hand something to the flight attendant and say “I don’t know what this is, but it was just by my feet.” It turned out that it was the cover for that little mechanical box, and apparently it HAD to be secure before we could go. So we got to sit there and wait for the mechanic to come and reattach it (I could see the whole process and it was WAY more involved than I would have thought to just reattach a plastic cover. Geez). Our scheduled departure time was just tickin’ away. Normally, I wouldn’t really care too much, but we were already on a very short leash with only a 50 minute window to change planes in Amsterdam. Every minute that passed by our scheduled departure time made me that much surer that we weren’t making that plane to Prague. Fortunately, our Prague flight was very early in the morning, and we knew there’d be more that day that we could get on.
The mechanic finally finished up, and we were ready to go. Take off was very smooth. Unfortunately, no one’s TV monitor worked for the first hour. I don’t know if it had anything to do with the mechanic’s work, but they had to reset the system a couple times. To me it wasn’t a huge deal, I just did word searches, but some people were FREAKING OUT on the flight attendants because they couldn’t watch a movie. Some people need to get a grip. Much to the flight attendants’ relief, I’m sure, everything was fine and dandy and working after that first hour. I looked through the movies offered, and while there were a lot, nothing really jumped out at me. Drinks and pretzels were served about as soon as the flight attendants were allowed to get out of their seat, which was nice. I had apple juice and Kyle had a Heineken (of course, since beer and wine are free on international flights…LOL). It seemed like they had barely gotten through the plane serving the first drink when they were coming back through with another drink and dinner. Now, I know some of you read my Paris trip TR and may remember that only salmon shepherd’s pie was offered as a meal on that flight. Ew! I think however, that the dinner on this flight was selected on purpose to make up for that salmon monstrosity (well, selected for me anyway). There was a choice of some kind of chicken with rice, which is what Kyle got, and the other choice was pasta (and not just any pasta, but cavatapi, which may very well be my favorite shape ) with tomato sauce (I loooove tomato sauce, I haaaaate cream sauces) and get this – BLACK OLIVES! Black olives are my most very favorite food in the entire world and I always put them in pasta. I thought I was kind of strange for doing that, but apparently not as far as Delta is concerned. I was a little overly excited for an airplane meal, but it was so good and I was very happy. It also had a little salad, a roll, crackers, cheddar cheese, and a chocolate chip cookie. It may rank as the best plane meal I’ve ever had (not that there is a long list of contestants for a category like that…). Then, like an unthinking fool, I got Coke Zero to drink with it. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I like Coke Zero a lot and since so many places in the US don’t have it, it’s just sort of automatic that I order it when I see it. What I didn’t think about though was that I really needed to sleep quite a bit on this flight since we’d be landing in Prague in the morning and wanted to stay up all day to get on the new time schedule (Prague is +6 hours from US eastern daylight time). Unfortunately, since I don’t drink caffeine all that much (never at home), it keeps me up like a zombie even if I just have a little. So despite putting in my headphones and playing some nice, soft music on my MP3, sleeping much was not in the cards. I did doze in and out here and there, but probably only for about 2-3 hours total. Kyle didn’t sleep much either. He watched a couple movies and then tried to sleep, but he never sleeps well on planes. I gave up trying to sleep after about 4 hours and played some Bejeweled on my little monitor. It’s such a good thing I only have a trial version of that game on my phone because I can waste hours that way.
About an hour before landing, they served breakfast. It was a nice croissant egg sandwich, a banana, and orange juice. During the flight we’d made up quite a bit of time, so despite the delay at leaving it looked like we were actually going to get in only about 10-15 min late. This put us right on the bubble of whether or not I thought we’d make our next flight. I surely didn’t think our checked bags would make it. We landed, and drove about five miles to the gate. (I’m not even kidding here…we couldn’t even SEE the airport when we landed. What is up with Amsterdam’s really long runways?? ) Of course to me it seemed even longer since I was champing at the bit to get off that plane and catch our next one. The weather in Amsterdam was beautiful. Super sunny! I hoped the same for Prague. Finally we reached the gate and started disembarking. They hadn’t known the gate for our Prague flight when we left Atlanta, so we had to ask the gate agent when we got off. There was one standing right at the exit of the jetway, and she was trying to help everyone despite this one lady standing right in front of her having a cow that she missed her Paris flight. Apparently the Paris people were cutting it even closer than we were and they had no chance of getting on that flight. The agent kept telling her to go speak to the people at the counter right next to us, but she just wouldn’t stop having a cow. I just stood behind the lady and held up my ticket so the agent could see that we needed the gate for Prague. She told us and we took off running.
Since this was our first stop in the EU, we had to go through passport control and security again. Fun. Fortunately, Amsterdam is a very efficient airport and we were through both lines in less than 15 minutes. Of course the terminal we came in to and the terminal we were going to were as absolutely as far away from each other as they could be at that airport. As we were approaching our new gate I noticed that there wasn’t a line or anything of people boarding, and the door was closed. I was so worried that we’d just missed it. However, upon asking the gate agent, she said that they hadn’t even started boarding and we were fine. Hadn’t started boarding and we were still scheduled to leave on time in 15 minutes?? Well, it was true.
Me in Amsterdam, happy that we had made it with even a couple minutes to spare!
It was a relatively small plane (not tiny, but one that held about 60 people), so they were able to board it very quickly. This was a KLM Cityhopper flight, and it was very pleasant. I would not hesitate to fly KLM again.
Kyle on the plane, ready to take off to Prague!
The flight was only about 90 minutes long, but they served us breakfast (again for us, since we’d had bfast on the previous flight)! It was a half cheese sandwich and an apple Danish with a drink (I got Coke Zero again because this time I wanted the caffeine to help keep me awake!). I wasn’t all that hungry since we’d just had the other breakfast sandwich, but I ate part of the danish because it looked (and was) really good. Before very long at all we were descending in to Prague. We got off the plane, and it officially became “Day 2”.
Up Next: Day 2- Does Venice Get Ousted As My “Favorite European City”?
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MNSSHP 2015: DH (Bane), Me (Batgirl), Genie, and our friends
I don't think in my wife's European travels for work, she has flown through Amsterdam. She's flown through Paris, Munich, London, and Zurich but never Amsterdam.
You could have found 23 people in the airport who could have outplayed the 23 players on the Dutch national team.
You could have found 23 people in the airport who could have outplayed the 23 players on the Dutch national team.
Oh dear, Timothy Mouse. I'm sorry your team didn't do well. I was thinking of you when I was watching those games and wishing they would do better for you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OneLittleSpark
Great start! Glad you made your flight, although I knew you did.
Can't wait to hear more!
Hi Spark! Thanks!
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MNSSHP 2015: DH (Bane), Me (Batgirl), Genie, and our friends
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I'm glad you made that connection - I'm pleasantly surprised by how quickly you got through immigration and customs. All I'll say is probably best not to come to Heathrow...
Interesting about the seatback TVs not working. I must admit that this does grate on me and I'd hate not having it for nine hours on the way to Orlando - on the way back home, not so much, as you want to try and sleep, but I will confess mine hasn't worked in the past and they've reset the entire plane to get it working, which I was very grateful for.
I'm glad you made that connection - I'm pleasantly surprised by how quickly you got through immigration and customs. All I'll say is probably best not to come to Heathrow...
Interesting about the seatback TVs not working. I must admit that this does grate on me and I'd hate not having it for nine hours on the way to Orlando - on the way back home, not so much, as you want to try and sleep, but I will confess mine hasn't worked in the past and they've reset the entire plane to get it working, which I was very grateful for.
That's what iPads are for. Don't ever depend on the seatback TVs working.
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Connecting flights make me nervous at the best of times. Cutting it close in an airport I've never been to-- well, I've done it, but it really takes it out of you!
Day 2: Friday, June 8, 2012 “Does Venice Get Ousted As My “FavoriteEuropeanCity”? (Part 1)
When I last left off, we had just arrived at the Prague airport. It was very quiet, but it was also pretty early in the morning. The airport was very nice and spacious. We went through passport control, and then to baggage claim. Ours was the only flight that had come in recently, so it was pretty easy to find which baggage carousel we needed. The bags started coming out right away. Kyle was watching for the bags while I was reading some of the signs around us (almost everything in Prague was in English as well as Czech). Kyle’s bag showed up before too long. I read on a sign that when the baggage for a flight was finished, a little picture of a suitcase in red would show up beside the flight number on the electronic board by the carousel. Right about that time I looked over at our electronic board and saw the little red suitcase pop up, indicating that our flight’s luggage was finished. But, but, but….where was MY bag?? There were only a couple bags still on the belt waiting to be claimed and my huge bright pink suitcase was not among them. Normally, I may have freaked out. However, with such a tight connection in Amsterdam, I was pretty sure the bag wasn’t lost, it just hadn’t made the connection. We went to the baggage office and the lady said yes, the bag was still in Amsterdam. She was very nice and helpful. She took our information and said that the bag would be on the next flight to Prague (which left in about two hours) and then the bag would be delivered to our hotel that afternoon. This is where my husband became very helpful. He is not always the most organized person in the world, but when we go on our trips he makes a binder with a sleeve folder for each day of the trip. In each folder is our hotel confirmation, print-outs of anything we have reservations for, our game tickets for that day, directions to anywhere we need to go that day, etc. It was super easy for him to find the hotel address for the lady at the desk. She apologized many times (even though I wasn’t upset at all), and gave us a coupon for a discount on our next KLM flight. After we were finished at the baggage desk, we took Kyle’s bag and headed through customs. That took all of a minute and a half and we were in the main part of the airport. As we walked out of customs, I immediately saw a man with Kyle’s name on a sign. We had pre-arranged with our hotel for a shuttle from the airport. We would be getting a rental car later in our trip, but we decided that since our hotel in Prague was so centrally located the rental car would just be sitting in a parking garage somewhere anyway. Who wants to pay for a car and parking to not use it? Not me! So the plan was that we would take the shuttle to the hotel and then when we were leaving Prague we would take the shuttle back to the airport and pick up our car. We would be returning the car to Prague airport at the end of our trip, so it worked out perfectly.
The shuttle driver only spoke a little English, but he was very friendly and welcoming with what he could say. He helped us put our things into the van and then we were on our way. The airport in Prague, as most airports are, is a little outside of the city. It was about a 30-35 minute drive to our hotel which was located right in the heart of Prague. Along the way, the driver pointed out a few sights which was nice. There were quite a few beautiful old monasteries and churchs. We came around a turn by a small park and he started pointing to the right saying “Look, look!” We suddenly had an amazing view of Prague. We were up a little bit on a hill, so we could see the whole city laid out below us. It was just stunning. Shortly after that some trees and buildings got in our way so we couldn’t see the city anymore but I couldn’t wait to get down there and explore!
We got in to downtown Prague and begin to drive through some of the quaintest, most storybook like streets I’ve ever seen. I immediately felt like I was in the movie Tangled. It looked just like that village where the castle is in that movie.
The driver parked, helped us with our bags, and began walking towards a pink building. Have I mentioned that pink is my favorite color? (Pink laptop, pink phone, pink camera…yeah, I’m one of those people.) Could the fact that our hotel was pink be any more perfect? I think not.
Our hotel for our time in Prague was called Hotel Pod Vezi. I absolutely loved the hotel and the staff, not to mention the location (more on that in a minute), and I don’t think I would stay anywhere else is Prague if (when) I go back. We checked in at the front desk and were told that our room (which had been upgraded to a suite!!) was not quite ready. I wasn’t too surprised since it was still only about 9:00 in the morning. They said it should be ready in about an hour. We said that was fine; we wanted to go explore anyway. We told them about my luggage being delivered later that afternoon and they said that was no problem – they would put it in our room as soon as it came. Fortunately I had packed some clothes in my carry-on backpack for just this situation. (I fly in yoga pants to be as comfy as possible, but there’s no way I was walking around Prague in them!) The hostess showed us the restroom so we could change. New clothes, brushed teeth, and brushed hair and I felt like a new person! It really helped me forget that I’d had hardly slept the previous night too. I was also very pleasantly surprised with my first experience with a public restroom in Prague. Clean, well-stocked, and spacious! It was the same throughout our whole trip, which made me especially happy after what I’d dealt with on my Paris trip. After we emerged (and probably looked like different people!), the hotel hostess put our bags in the manager’s office and locked it so we wouldn’t have to carry them around while we explored. We were ready to see this amazing city!
Remember how I said a minute ago that our hotel’s location was awesome? Well, when we pulled up to the hotel, of course I had seen this huge tower just to the left. And I mean JUST to the left of our hotel.
I was so busy trying to look at everything though, that I didn’t realize that tower was one end of the CharlesBridge – one of the most famous landmarks in Prague. I vaguely recalled Kyle telling me when he booked the hotel that it was right by the bridge, but I didn’t realize at the time how close it really was. It was fantastic!
This reminded me of the dog holding the keys on POTC
So we walked through the tower and were on the CharlesBridge with all of its statues and amazing views of the VltavaRiver and so many gorgeous buildings in Prague. It was just one of those times where you can’t help but just stand and stare and try to take everything in. When we got about half way across the bridge, we turned around and had the most stunning view of Prague castle and St. Vitus cathedral which is located inside the castle.
I knew immediately that I loved this city more than any other I’d been to in Europe. It seems so cliché, but the best words to describe it really are things like “story book”, “fairytale land”, etc. It was just so adorable! All of the buildings were different pastel colors, and the Vltava running through the center of the city was just so perfect.
We decided to just wander through the city and see what caught our eye as things we wanted to visit more in depth while we were there. I knew for SURE that I wanted to go up and explore the castle , so we decided that would be our first order of business the next day. We also wanted to find the UEFA Fan Zone so we had somewhere to watch the Euro games while in Prague. Let me say one thing about anyone planning to go to Prague – it is essential to have a map before you do any wandering off! If you have sight of the river, then of course it’s easy to know where you are, but once you go into the buildings, the roads are all crazy and change names every time they make even the slightest turn. I’m not even entirely sure where all we went that first morning, because we had neglected to bring the map with us that was in our guidebook (believe me, we never made that mistake again!). It wasn’t bad though, because I just kept snapping pictures and was in awe of how pretty everything was. Somehow we managed to stumble upon Old Town Square, which happened to be where the Fan Zone was located! I wasn’t sure we’d ever find it again, but at least we knew it existed. We also found an ATM (that wasn’t hard at all, they were all over the place) and got out some Czech crowns.
We found my dog Monster's twin in Prague!
This was at the Fan Zone...I couldn't resist getting a pic with two of my Real Madrid players.
This ham smelled sooooo good!
By about noon, I realized I was getting completely exhausted. Not sleeping on the plane had really done me in. I’m like a three year old when I get tired. I get completely grouchy and frustrated with everything (which wasn’t helped by us not having a map). I know it’s happening, and I know why it’s happening, but unfortunately the only solution is that I have to sleep. Before I ripped Kyle’s head off completely, I suggested that we head back to the hotel and get a nap. Our room should be ready by now, since they’d said they only needed about an hour and it had been about 3 hours. Somehow we managed to get back to the river and thus the CharlesBridge. We walked across towards our hotel. When we were right near our hotel, I started smelling the most wonderful smell – like something sugary and delicious baking. I couldn’t see at all where it was coming from. Then I noticed a small icecream stand and figured they must be doing fresh waffle cones. It smelled so good, but I wasn’t in the mood for icecream so I decided I’d get one later. We made one little stop before we went into the hotel, and that was at a little convenience store nearby to grab some water for our room and I also got a pack of Starburst (they’re my favorite candy and I was intrigued because the Czech version had different flavors). Our room was ready and the hostess at the front desk gave us our key and helped us get our bags out of the office. My bag hadn’t come in yet, but I wasn’t expecting it until the afternoon anyway. We were shown to our suite and the hostess also showed us how we needed to insert the room key in a special little box to turn on the electricity in our room. I had never seen this before, but it ended up being that way at every hotel we stayed at on this trip in Czech, Poland, and Germany. They are very interested in not wasting electricity, and thus make it impossible for you to leave lights on or the tv when you leave the room. Pretty smart! The only annoying part was having to reset the clock every time you came back to the room. We checked out the room (which was awesome and ridiculously huge for a European hotel room ) and I was very pleased to see we had a lovely view of the CharlesBridge tower right outside our window.
The other room in our suite...
Even the ceiling was awesome...
The view out our window of the Charles Bridge tower!
We checked emails (thanks to free Wifi at the hotel!) and I ate my Starburst. Well, I started to eat it. The flavors in Czech are strawberry, lemon-lime, orange, and black currant. The texture was different from the US version…a little grainier…and all of the flavors tasted really odd, even the strawberry and orange. They were edible, but when I got to the black currant it was one of those moments where you are chewing and thinking “Did I really put this in my mouth voluntarily?” It was gross. The wrappers did have really funny little sayings on them (in English) though, so at least that kept me amused.
After I gagged down a few Starburst, I laid on the bed and that was all she wrote. I was OUT in about ten seconds. At some point our doorbell rang (yes, our room had a doorbell! How cool is that?) and they delivered my suitcase. Good thing Kyle was there because I heard nothing during the entire exchange. All I knew was that my suitcase was mysteriously present when I woke up.
I’m gonna cut it off there for now, because this was a really long day. I also want to draw out the anticipation a little by telling you to get ready, because my next update is going to have my favorite picture I have ever taken anywhere! You may well book your own trip to Prague when you see it, so you’ve been warned!
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MNSSHP 2015: DH (Bane), Me (Batgirl), Genie, and our friends
YAY YOU STARTED! Phew, what a hectic connection - and all that worry just to find out it hadn't even boarded yet!
I'm so excited to read along! One day I will get to Prague... it's one of the cities very high up on my list...
You will get there and you will LOVE it!!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Colexis Mom
Great start! Glad you made all the connections!
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Originally Posted by DisneyDana
Great start!
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Originally Posted by KMB733
So glad to see you started!!!! What a crazy travel day! Glad you made your connections!!
Thanks everyone!
Quote:
Originally Posted by lauriep
Connecting flights make me nervous at the best of times. Cutting it close in an airport I've never been to-- well, I've done it, but it really takes it out of you!
I agree!
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MNSSHP 2015: DH (Bane), Me (Batgirl), Genie, and our friends
I'm glad you made that connection - I'm pleasantly surprised by how quickly you got through immigration and customs. All I'll say is probably best not to come to Heathrow...
Heathrow was bad enough when it was my final destination... I can't imagine trying to connect there!
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MNSSHP 2015: DH (Bane), Me (Batgirl), Genie, and our friends
About This Page: 
Melanie
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Pixie Dust
Since I already did my little pre-trip post regarding the who’s and why’s of my trip, I will just jump right in to the action! (Ok so there’s not so much action the first day since I spent 99% of it just sitting in one spot, but nonetheless, here we go!)
). Then I sat and chatted with DMiL for a few minutes while we waited for Kyle to return. 
DMiL had come to our house to stay with DS for the last couple days of the school year, then they were driving back down to her house in Tampa for the duration of our trip. Kyle came home, took a quick shower, packed up the car, and we were out the door in record time. Everything was going well. We drove over to my sister’s house. We were leaving my car at her house and she was driving us to (and picking us up from) the airport since it is right across I-95 from where she lives. She was ready to go when we got there, so we didn’t waste any time.
As Kyle and I walked in towards the Delta kiosks to check our bags, I saw a very familiar face. A lady that Kyle worked with (and I knew from when I also worked at the office) was standing in the Delta line! It was too funny because of all the people in Savannah we know, we see this lady in the most random places (meaning places we are not at very often, like Rooms 2 Go or the airport 
LOL). So, we had a friend to chat with while we checked in. We quickly figured out that we were all on the same flight to Atlanta, because well, most of Delta’s flights from Savannah are through Atlanta. It was nice to have someone to talk to while we waited for our flight to board.
We got on the plane and unfortunately weren’t sitting anywhere near our friend, so we said goodbye. It’s such a short flight they usually don’t even turn off the seatbelt sign during the flight. They wouldn’t have turned it off during this flight in particular anyway, as there was quite a bit of turbulence due to clouds. 
It wasn’t anything terribly scary, just sort of constantly bumpy. We got into Atlanta right on time, then drove around the airport for about 20 minutes. (This is the beginning of a theme for this trip…) I was starting to wonder if we were driving back to Savannah because someone forgot something. 
It also meant that my backpack would under no circumstances fit under the seat in front of me. 
That really annoyed me, because I almost always put my carry-on under the seat (just like they always encourage people to!). I like having it easily accessible during the flight and I have this irrational fear that if I have it in the overhead bin and go to get it out during the flight, we will hit turbulence right at that time and I will drop it on someone’s head. Does this happen often? Probably not. Could I see it happening to me? Absolutely. 
But alas, I had no choice and had to put my backpack above my seat. Fortunately on international flights since everyone gets a free checked bag, there is way more room in the overhead bins so it is not hard to find a place right near your seat to put your bag. Everyone was getting on and seemed about ready to go, and then we see this girl a row ahead of us hand something to the flight attendant and say “I don’t know what this is, but it was just by my feet.” It turned out that it was the cover for that little mechanical box, and apparently it HAD to be secure before we could go. So we got to sit there and wait for the mechanic to come and reattach it (I could see the whole process and it was WAY more involved than I would have thought to just reattach a plastic cover. Geez). Our scheduled departure time was just tickin’ away. Normally, I wouldn’t really care too much, but we were already on a very short leash with only a 50 minute window to change planes in Amsterdam. 
Every minute that passed by our scheduled departure time made me that much surer that we weren’t making that plane to Prague. Fortunately, our Prague flight was very early in the morning, and we knew there’d be more that day that we could get on.
Some people need to get a grip. 
It seemed like they had barely gotten through the plane serving the first drink when they were coming back through with another drink and dinner. Now, I know some of you read my Paris trip TR and may remember that only salmon shepherd’s pie was offered as a meal on that flight. 
Ew! I think however, that the dinner on this flight was selected on purpose to make up for that salmon monstrosity (well, selected for me anyway). 
There was a choice of some kind of chicken with rice, which is what Kyle got, and the other choice was pasta (and not just any pasta, but cavatapi, which may very well be my favorite shape 
) with tomato sauce (I loooove tomato sauce, I haaaaate cream sauces) and get this – BLACK OLIVES! 
Then, like an unthinking fool, I got Coke Zero to drink with it. 
Dumb, dumb, dumb. I like Coke Zero a lot and since so many places in the US don’t have it, it’s just sort of automatic that I order it when I see it. What I didn’t think about though was that I really needed to sleep quite a bit on this flight since we’d be landing in Prague in the morning and wanted to stay up all day to get on the new time schedule (Prague is +6 hours from US eastern daylight time). Unfortunately, since I don’t drink caffeine all that much (never at home), it keeps me up like a zombie even if I just have a little. 
So despite putting in my headphones and playing some nice, soft music on my MP3, sleeping much was not in the cards. I did doze in and out here and there, but probably only for about 2-3 hours total. Kyle didn’t sleep much either. He watched a couple movies and then tried to sleep, but he never sleeps well on planes. I gave up trying to sleep after about 4 hours and played some Bejeweled on my little monitor. It’s such a good thing I only have a trial version of that game on my phone because I can waste hours that way.
It was a nice croissant egg sandwich, a banana, and orange juice. During the flight we’d made up quite a bit of time, so despite the delay at leaving it looked like we were actually going to get in only about 10-15 min late. This put us right on the bubble of whether or not I thought we’d make our next flight. I surely didn’t think our checked bags would make it. We landed, and drove about five miles to the gate. (I’m not even kidding here…we couldn’t even SEE the airport when we landed. What is up with Amsterdam’s really long runways?? 
) Of course to me it seemed even longer since I was champing at the bit to get off that plane and catch our next one. The weather in Amsterdam was beautiful. Super sunny! I hoped the same for Prague. Finally we reached the gate and started disembarking. They hadn’t known the gate for our Prague flight when we left Atlanta, so we had to ask the gate agent when we got off. There was one standing right at the exit of the jetway, and she was trying to help everyone despite this one lady standing right in front of her having a cow that she missed her Paris flight. Apparently the Paris people were cutting it even closer than we were and they had no chance of getting on that flight. The agent kept telling her to go speak to the people at the counter right next to us, but she just wouldn’t stop having a cow. I just stood behind the lady and held up my ticket so the agent could see that we needed the gate for Prague. She told us and we took off running.
However, upon asking the gate agent, she said that they hadn’t even started boarding and we were fine. Hadn’t started boarding and we were still scheduled to leave on time in 15 minutes?? Well, it was true. 
"Sparky"(My first trip.)
PassPorter Guide Author
But, but, but….where was MY bag?? 
There were only a couple bags still on the belt waiting to be claimed and my huge bright pink suitcase was not among them. 
(even though I wasn’t upset at all), and gave us a coupon for a discount on our next KLM flight. After we were finished at the baggage desk, we took Kyle’s bag and headed through customs. That took all of a minute and a half and we were in the main part of the airport. 
He helped us put our things into the van and then we were on our way. The airport in Prague, as most airports are, is a little outside of the city. It was about a 30-35 minute drive to our hotel which was located right in the heart of Prague. Along the way, the driver pointed out a few sights which was nice. There were quite a few beautiful old monasteries and churchs. We came around a turn by a small park and he started pointing to the right saying “Look, look!” 
We told them about my luggage being delivered later that afternoon and they said that was no problem – they would put it in our room as soon as it came. Fortunately I had packed some clothes in my carry-on backpack for just this situation. 
I knew immediately that I loved this city more than any other I’d been to in Europe. 
Before I ripped Kyle’s head off completely, I suggested that we head back to the hotel and get a nap. Our room should be ready by now, since they’d said they only needed about an hour and it had been about 3 hours. Somehow we managed to get back to the river and thus the CharlesBridge. We walked across towards our hotel. When we were right near our hotel, I started smelling the most wonderful smell – like something sugary and delicious baking. 
I couldn’t see at all where it was coming from. Then I noticed a small icecream stand and figured they must be doing fresh waffle cones. It smelled so good, but I wasn’t in the mood for icecream so I decided I’d get one later. We made one little stop before we went into the hotel, and that was at a little convenience store nearby to grab some water for our room and I also got a pack of Starburst (they’re my favorite candy and I was intrigued because the Czech version had different flavors). Our room was ready and the hostess at the front desk gave us our key and helped us get our bags out of the office. My bag hadn’t come in yet, but I wasn’t expecting it until the afternoon anyway. We were shown to our suite and the hostess also showed us how we needed to insert the room key in a special little box to turn on the electricity in our room. I had never seen this before, but it ended up being that way at every hotel we stayed at on this trip in Czech, Poland, and Germany. They are very interested in not wasting electricity, and thus make it impossible for you to leave lights on or the tv when you leave the room. Pretty smart! The only annoying part was having to reset the clock every time you came back to the room. We checked out the room (which was awesome and ridiculously huge for a European hotel room 
It was gross. The wrappers did have really funny little sayings on them (in English) though, so at least that kept me amused. 
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