Ahoj from Prague!

Ahoj (pronounced A-hoy as in sailor-speak)

We are finally here. What a mega trip it was to get here! We had smooth flights, and not too many dramas with our excess luggage. The only issue really was trying to negotiate the transfer of all of our stuff via train to Terminal 5 at Heathrow (we ended up having to collect our luggage in London and recheck it in - it was the most cost effective option with excess luggage).

Pavel (one of Jase's workmates) met us at the airport last night, and sorted a taxi van for us. The taxi driver then followed Pavel to the penzion (apartment) where we are staying. We were so exhausted that we had very quick showers and just crashed afterwards. Poor Jase woke at 5am and couldn't get back to sleep - it didn't help that the Saturday market began setting up at this time right outside our bedroom window! Luckily for me, I was oblivious to all of this and managed to sleep through until 8am. We went to the supermarket just up the road to attempt to find some breakfast food - not so easy when you are gluten free and there are about 6 or 7 languages detailing the ingredients on most foods - but not many seem to include English! So I had rice crackers and banana. We did have a small faux pas (who knows if that is how you spell 'fo par' but I am far too tired to care at this stage!) - when we thought we were buying a bottle of water each, but somehow ended up with some horrible sweet fizzy stuff - yuck - not ideal at breakfast time...

Pavel met us at the supermarket, and then we drove to get his car because the car Pavel was driving is Jase's work car - so now we have wheels! Not that it did us any good mind you... we have just been on a drive to look at the area we hope to rent an apartment in - we could not find it at all - when we came back and googled some of the bundles of letters (that are Czech words) off sign posts, we realised we were nowhere near the place where we wanted to be... I am hoping it is just the tiredness! It better be, or I will be in a hell of alot of trouble with my poor sense of direction when I hit the roads on my bike!

So far, we have not found anyone at all who speaks English! We have been to 2 supermarkets, a hippy shop (ie - gluten free goods), a coffee shop, and a bike shop - all the staff were young but alas no English at all. Not even the taxi driver. Oh well it will be a challenge!

Not much else to report... the weather is great - 25 degrees today - and not a cloud in the sky. Our penzion is very nice - in a really quiet area, which is a good place to start. I am trying to psych up for a run, but tiredness seems to be winning... Too scared to open my bike at the moment - the case was standing upright when we were waiting for the train at Heathrow, and it got blown over and landed with a huge crash flat on it's side... I guess it has been through worse in it's time...

Ahoj (handy as 'hello' and 'goodbye' come in one... only to friends though - so probably easier not to talk to strangers at this point!)
J