Moving Day - Corfu to Prague, Czech Republic 🇨🇿

Breakfast on the balcony, watching the sunrise here one last time. Our bags were mostly packed last night. Sarah has finally organised hers well enough to fit her shoes in easily. We need to check out by 10:30 am this morning, which leaves plenty of time for one last swim in the pool and some more book reading.

There’s a bus at 10:40 am, which we opt for. We head into town and find a nice café with great air-conditioning right near the bus stop to the airport.

A late morning tea and then lunch means we can hang out here for a couple of hours before heading to the airport.

At 1:30 pm, we catch the bus to the airport. It’s a fairly short 20-minute trip. We’re already checked in, so we go straight to the security check, which takes a while to get through. I get pulled aside for an extra check—probably because my belt set off the metal detector. I was slightly worried by the fact they had their rubber gloves on! 😮 But it was just an extra explosives test, and then I was allowed through.

There’s no passport control as we’re staying within the Schengen zone. Three hours to wait for our flight now. Maybe we could have stayed in the café another hour. Better safe than sorry.

We’re travelling with Ryanair again, so fingers crossed their service is as reliable as last time. 🤞

The service was efficient and no-frills again, with not much legroom, but for a two-hour flight, it was fine. We had a row of three seats with no one in the window seat, so that was good for elbow room. The flight touched down in Prague a few minutes early. We had carried our backpacks on, so we headed straight outside for the trolley bus to town—Route 59.

Just one problem! We couldn’t get our tickets on our tram app to activate. The eSIM finally let us down and we didn’t have any internet! Shoot! OK, Plan B: buy a ticket from the machines right by the bus stop. That worked fine until we got on the bus and realised we had no idea where we needed to get off to change onto the tram line. Feck! And yes—we had already tried turning it off and on again, so don’t suggest that! 😉

Some frantic tech settings-checking and tweaking eventually re-enabled data on the eSIM. For some weird reason, data had flicked over to the main SIM. Once we had internet again, I used Google Maps to figure out where to get off and where to catch tram line 20. Phew.

The bus and tram were both very nice—clean, and although the first one was standing room only, it was a relatively short ride. The next, longer ride, had plenty of seats. We sat back and enjoyed the ride into town and the sights of a new city. First impressions are positive—it looks very clean, fresh, and full of extremely pretty buildings.

We hopped off the tram and had only a 90-metre walk to our apartment. A remote check-in with a lockbox and good instructions made this stress-free. With different keys for three separate doors and a tiny lift to the 3rd floor, we were soon inside our home for the next five nights. It looks very nice—as it should, given it’s exceeded our Cromwell Motel benchmark at $219 per night. That will push the average nightly cost of the trip up a bit, but the average is still looking good, so that’s fine with us. We can afford it. 🤔

A quick unpack and we headed back out for milk. There aren’t many supermarkets on the map around here, but we found a tiny dairy that had milk. Hmmm... they have a minimum spend for card payments, and we don’t have any local cash yet. Until about a week ago, I had assumed they used the Euro here, but nope—they use the Koruna (CZK), with 1 NZD equal to about 12.5 CZK.

The nice Chinese lady in the store said we could use our card if we bought two milks. Not that she spoke any English. Total spend: 50 CZK, or about $4 NZD. We’ll need to find a bigger supermarket tomorrow and do a proper shop. At least now we can have a coffee, and we still have some muesli left over from Corfu for breakfast.

It’s 9 pm—even though the clocks went back an hour—so it’s time for bed. We’ll start exploring this beautiful city tomorrow.