Prague 2018 - Day 0: Jet Lag

It's been four years since our last Prague vacation, and, just like the last time, we're sort of tagging along on the Moravian College spring break trip.

I say "sort of" because we're offset from the official trip by a day or so, aren't lodging with them, and are only partially participating in their itinerary. Joining us on this journey are two of Sabrina's colleagues/friends, Shannon and Brenna.

As with any spring break vacation worth the trouble, this one began with a snow storm.

It was just starting to turn to snow around 10 or 10:30 AM, yesterday.

By 12;30 PM, it was bad enough that Lehigh decided to suspend all bus services, and then close at 1 PM.

Sabrina and I ventured out just before 4 PM, to go pick up Brenna and Shannon, in near-blizzard conditions.

There were trees down, power outages, accidents, and roads closed. Our flight wasn't until 11:30 PM, out of JFK airport, but we were on the road around 4:30 PM.

An hour or so later, our intended route wasn't looking promising, so we took a break for dinner, and to allow some time for the traffic situation to improve.

After dinner, the wind was driving sleet into our faces so hard that we had to walk backwards to the car.

Traffic had cleared up substantially, so the remainder of the drive was fairly normal. The upper level of the Verrazano bridge was even open, despite all the red X signs above the lanes suggesting otherwise.

We finally got to the JFK parking lot at 8 PM.

Against all odds, our plane managed to fight its way out of New York, after some delay, some de-icing, and some waiting on the runway.

As if sleeping on a red-eye flight isn't sufficiently difficult, there were a few choppy spots over the Atlantic.

We were late enough getting into Lisbon that we had no time to spare to make the connecting flight. We rushed through passport control and customs, arriving at the gate for the flight to Prague just as it was boarding.

The 3-hour jaunt to Prague was uneventful, and we landed at Vaclav Havel Airport at 5:30 PM, local time. It had been almost 20 hours since we left home, at that point.

We collected our luggage, figured out a public transit plan to get to downtown Prague, rode the bus to the metro station, took the metro downtown, switched lines, walked a few blocks, and eventually found the Airbnb.

After some initial difficulty contacting someone to let us in, and carrying our luggage up (what felt like) at least 200 stairs, we settled into the apartment around 7:30 PM. This left us just enough time to find a restaurant (Lemon Leaf Thai), eat dinner, and grab a shower before passing out for the night.

Tomorrow, we recuperate. The rest of the Moravian contingent should be arriving tomorrow, and we plan to join them for dinner. Other than that, I don't know that we have any specific plans yet.