Week 4 – Weekend

As I said in my last posting, our classes ended for the first course I am taking on Thursday. It was sad to say goodbye to 20 of my new friends from the last four weeks (8 additional members of the group are continuing onto the next course as I am). I was flattered to receive emails from a number of them over the weekend saying how much they enjoyed having me be a part of their study abroad program. One of them, Ilana, from Cheltenham near Philadelphia, gave me a note on the last night that I wasn’t allowed to read until she was gone. I took a picture of it.

I will always remember that group of young people and how nice and inclusive they were to this old guy who crashed their party.

I took a two hour Ryan Air flight to Prague on Saturday. It is truly a beautiful city, and cheap! I have too many good pictures so I will have to work on picking a few of the best ones to post. I stayed in a Category 8 (very high end) Marriott Autograph property adjacent to the city center called the Boscolo Hotel for 151 euro/night. A similar property in Charlotte would cost $350 – 400 per night and probably twice that or more in NYC. The first day I walked around aimlessly and liked what I saw but had no idea what I was seeing. Back at the hotel that night I started thinking a trip to a foreign country that is not English speaking by yourself is not a good idea, so I needed to come up with a plan for the rest of the trip. The next morning, I met with the concierge and he signed me up for a 6-hour group walking tour of the city with an English speaking guide and that proved to be the perfect solution. I saw everything I needed to see, got some exercise, and spoke with some British and Americans who were on the tour the whole day. One of the American couples in their 60’s, were on a 6-week motorcycle tour of Europe. He was a school teacher from Ohio and I never did learn what his wife did for a living. This was the 4^th summer in a row they have done this and they store their motorcycle at a shop in Heidelberg, Germany for the balance of the year when they leave. He told of very interesting travels and never having had a bad experience in the 4 years. That would not be for me but they loved it. On the tour was an Englishman who had lived in San Diego for over 20 years and worked as an IT consultant. I was amazed at the amount of photography equipment he was carrying – 2 or 3 different cameras and lenses that must have weighed 50 + lbs. I had to wonder if he could really get a better shot with all of that than I could with my iPhone 6+. Our guide was an interesting character. He was born in Louisiana, grew up in Chicago, and had been in Europe for 10 years. He was fluent in German and Czech in addition to English (and he spoke that with a British accent). I would have never believed he was a US citizen until he dropped the English accent and talked like he was from Chicago. He says he uses the accent because more English speaking people understand him when he does that. I talked about how cheap this city is and this tour was about 40 euro and it included a pickup at your hotel and transport to the starting point, the English speaking guide, a one-hour boat ride on the river with wine and beer, and lunch with beer at a really neat Czech restaurant. One more illustration of the costs in the largest city in the Czech Republic was dinner on Sunday night at a nice Italian place near my hotel. I had 2 gins (yes only 2), a beer, a tomato and mozzarella salad and an entrée, and the price was a little less than 15 euro!

I returned home (funny how I used that expression for Ireland without thinking about it until I typed it) uneventfully on Monday evening. I popped into orientation class this morning and met the 8 new people that are joining the class for the next session. When I finished introducing myself and telling them what they had to look forward to these next 4 weeks, the Executive Director of the program asked me if I wanted a full time job in their PR department.

Tomorrow my daughter Katie and her husband William, as well as my son B J and his girlfriend Whitney arrive for a one week visit. It promises to be a lot of fun as I get a chance to show them around Dublin and the west of Ireland.

Irish Language lesson:

Lorry = Truck

Programme = Program

Assignation = an appointment to meet with someone in secret

Pictures:

Prague Castle was built with sandstone that has some iron in it. When first built it would have been a light color but the iron impurities are rusting turning the stone black; The Czech Republic Presidential Palace; View of the city below from the Prague Castle; Prague Nove Mesto (Music Hall); Astronomical Clock was built in 1410 and has moving figures that give a little show every hour. Amazing that they could create something like that so long ago that still works.