.. after a freebie two day conference which paid for the trip. I'm not silly enough to say 'no thanks' to that 🙂
Worst bit was the time keeping of Czech Airlines – now you know where your Euro money goes, they wouldn't use cheaper airlines with more sensible flight times.
It was always going to be tight to see something on Thursday night, and a delay in leaving Heathrow meant I was glad I hadn't booked for anything. It did mean a more relaxed meal in my favourite veggie / vegan restaurant, near the Charles Bridge.
Friday morning was spent shopping, including a couple of inexpensive bi porn DVDs from a remainder shop. One has 'Bi Muzstvo' (I'm not going to do the accents) on the cover, 'Bi Hokejovy Team' in small print on the back and on the DVD, and turns out to be 'Bi The Blue Line' which apparently was nominated for 'Best Bisxual Video' and 'Best Director' in the GayVN 2003 awards.
The curious thing is that it was made in Czech Republic, but it's been dubbed.. into Czech!? Polish-style too (oh, I don't think I have told you about that yet!) with English subtitles for the 'plot' bits of dialogue.
Friday afternoon was the conference day one, in one of the city's council buildings. The corridor walls have photos of famous people visiting Prague, including Cherie Blair(!). I was amused to see that someone's stuck a filing cabinet in front of almost all of the one of Bill Gates III.
I was enjoying it enough to not to leave early to go to an opera, but stay to the end.. and the free dinner, which lasted until bedtime.
Saturday morning was conference, then a surprisingly free lunch (there was no indication of this on the programme) then the closing sessions. I'd done something in the morning and was praised at the end – for the first time ever – for my dancing. (Rather than stand still and narrate some Powerpoint, I'd moved about a bit. Someone else had had the most densely packed PP slides ever – I stopped counting at 400 words on one.)
The evening was spent at the National Theatre seeing a well-sung, if slightly odd in places production of Carmen. (The uniforms were 'period', but they had phones, flashbulbs and electric signs.)
Dunday morning, I was intending to go up their equivalent of the Eiffel Tower again. The weather had been lovely, t-shirts. Not this morning, despite the forecast. It chucked it down, so I went to the National Museum, a slightly dated mix of natural history and geological museums, with a bit of 'artifacts of people living here up to about the 11th Century' thrown in.
Brunch at Clear Head, then it cleared up enough to walk in some parks, including one with a good environmental photo exhibition. One last bit of shopping, then off to the airport for.. a two hour delay. This was particularly frustrating because the weather was now lovely again and there are better things to do than wait at airports.
Good trip though, and I'm thinking about when to do the next one.