Praha

august 7: we got to praha yesterday. it was rainy. but somehow, we've been getting along just happily. connie was a bit snappish while looking for laundry though... :( and somehow, connie's pda (ume) is now no longer turning on :( we are now relying on chaffee's astroid.

we took the noon train from berlin. the train was full and lots of smoking going on. eventually, we went up to the first class train - empty! and AC! and no smoking! so we sat down. the smoke has been bothering chaffee and he's been coughing - hopefully not getting sick... :( the train ride from dresden to czech republic was amazingly beautiful. huge cliffs and beautiful green & river. when we got to the czech border though, we got kicked out of the 1st class train and had to go to 2nd class. boo :P

getting into praha was easy. we got on the c metro and got to our pension. there was some mix up with the gomio site and apparently, we are only booked for 2 nights. after unpacking, we headed to get laundry done. (since it was raining, drying it in the room would be difficult.) we found laundry king (really nice guy there, from the states - near new orleans). there was internet! but gmail didn't work and we were trying to book hostel for budapest. the computers were running red hat! ;) so connie cheated the time limit by using terminal to log into merly! go ssh! go bsd! it started raining really hard after the laundry (the dryer took 8 min! centrifuge is an awesome idea, saves environment - should look into this). we decided to get dinner in Staroměstské náměstí (the old town square). we found a restaurant that had chicken noodle soup and lots of veggie dishes since there are so much meat in germany.

this morning, we are using the internet cafe that is downstairs in our pension. there is another mac user here. ;) we are going to the main station to reserve our tickets for budapest and then going to see if we can get show tickets to see mozart's die zauberflöte marionette show. it is 250th birthday of mozart, we should see some of it while in this amazingly classical city (more posters for classical music than anywhere connie has been). after that, we shall explore old town hall & the square in daylight. and then go to mucha museum for their art nouveau exhibit. if we are lucky, we'll go see the marionette show tonight, else, it will have to be the ghost tour. ;) joanna would be so proud.

oh... we are changing our travel itinerary. instead of going to greece right after budapest, we are going to munchen and then to füssen to see the schloß neuschwanstein & hohenschwangau. then we'll stay another night in munchen. we will then fly to athens and fly back. the train ride to and back from athens will take 4 days and we'd rather not do that.

ok... write us. ;) we have been seeing stein's comments and we appreciate it. :D