The trip home

I wrote the following post yesterday on the plane from Amsterdam and Minneapolis. Today my cold has hit hard. Or I have jetlag. Or both.  And glad to be home to my comfy bed, lush towels and vegetables.

We are over Ontario right now, and have about 1.5 hours leftof our flight. I understand that we are returning to winter – no, no, no!!!! It finally warmed up a little in Prague, just as we were leaving.

I awoke on our last day in Prague with a cold.  We decided to stick close by unstead of walking to Bakeshop Praha for breakfast. Forgoing the very rich treats was part of weaning ourselves off this wonderful trip.  Marek told us to meet him at his office over the lunch hour so he could take us to some stores that locals shop at for gifts. He showed us two stores that we could return to after he went back to work:  a factory store for traditional “onion” china and a lead crystal shop that locals frequent. Then we went together to a bookshop that also has books in English. I bought a memoir by Vaclav Havel, a playwright who was the final president of Czechoslovakia after the wall fell and the first president of the Czech Republic . We were very excited to find Krtek books there. (Look back to one of the posts I wrote from Budapest about a little mole cartoon.) We have fallen in love with Krtek. And the book that Marek suggested we buy is called Krtek and the mother. (Watch the video on Youtube if you dare.) It's pretty out there. We laughed until we cried in the store.

We told him we wanted to try one of the pervasive sausages from a street vendor. He showed us his favorite vendor on Wenslislaus Square and laughed hysterically about how we would feel later on. I think his exact words were, “do it now so your ystem has time to clean itself out before you get on the plane to go home.” Worked perfectly for me.

We found some lovely crystal glasses, decorative plates, and of course, refrigerator magnets; and took our goods back to the hotel. It was finally fairly warm so we decided that we had to enjoy a bit of time in an outdoor cafe on our last day in Prague. We went to the Vltava and found perfect table in front of the Smetana (composer) museum with a perfect view of the Charles Bridge and the Castle. Even more perfect was that they had blankets on the chairs for us to cuddle up in. We sat there for an hour and a half just soaking in the view and appreciating our good fortune at being able to make this trip. Then we went back to Bakeshop Praha to get croissants to eat for breakfast at the airport the next day. Jan was very dissapointed that there were no almond ones left – but the plain croissants are already so rich that who's  complaining?

We had some down time back in our hotel (where Marek's promises came true). I was feeling pretty punky at this point, so for dinner we found a restaurant just a few blocks away. It was more of a local haunt, and we had a really nice and quite inexpensive dinner. Our wacky adventure was to try absinthe as an after dinner treat. The waitress told us it was very strong, so we asked for one portion in two glasses. She gladly obliged and then watched us with mirth in her eyes as we took ages to sip even half a shot down. It was very green. And very strong. I think I put my whole mouth to sleep. In the half hour it took me to get it down.

Our trip home has gone quite smoothly today. We successfully got all our packages to fit in our luggage. The driver got us to the airport with plenty of time for us  to have one more of the great lattes they serve in Europe to wash down our croissants. We spent the rest of our koronas on Krtek paraphenalia and jumped on the plane to Amsterdam. We again only had two hours in the Amsterdam airport – much to Jan's sadness. But we spent the rest of our Euros there, and got teased by the border patrol that we should have spent mlore time in our homeland (once he saw Vanderwall on Jan's passport).

We are now over Grand Marais. The flight has so far included a lunch, three movies (I chose Social Network, Red and Hereafter—man are those really different from each other!) and an afternoon snack. We got up at 6:45am. It's now 4:45pm. And 16 hours have elapsed. It's just weird.

Our dear sister-in-law Kathy is picking us up at the airport. I can't wait to see my dog and cat, do laundry, wear different clothes and sleep in my own bed. But first – I will endure the ear splitting descent into MSP. It's hell having a cold when flying!