New Year's Eve in Prague

We normally stay in town for New Year's eve, but since it's our last NYE here, we decided to travel. We wanted to go somewhere different, and decided on Budapest. Until we started looking at plane tickets. There were no direct flights and we had to connect in Prague and it would take a minimum of 8 hours. There were just no flights to get us there in a decent amount of time (a direct flight would take about 2 hours).

So, since all flights connected in Prague, we decided to do Prague. We arrived on Tuesday afternoon, but not without a little drama at the airport. When we tried to check in we were told our reservation had been canceled. After lots of phone calls and back and forth, it was discovered that if you make a change using SkyEurope's online system they cancel your reservation without warning.

The short story is you have to pay for each piece of luggage you check. We realized the night before we would need to check luggage. I tried to add it to our reservation, but it failed. Worse yet, I received to notification that it had failed and, of course, it never occurred to me our reservation would be canceled! Well, we were able to get on the plane after we paid twice as much at the airport to check our bags.

We arrived and checked into out hotel and had a walk around the city. Boy, was it cold! We had scheduled a night-time walking tour, so went back to our rooms to add another layer of clothing before the tour, where we learned about the ghosts of Prague! Lots of intriguing stories, but we wondered how many were made up for tourists...

The next day was New Year's Eve. We did some shopping and sight-seeing, then in the evening we made out way to the river front to board our boat for a jazz ans dinner cruise along the Vltava river. It was a small intimate setting with about a dozen tables, a buffet of cold appys, and a hot entree. The jazz quartet was very good and played at a volume that still allowed you to talk. The view of the city from the river was wonderful.

At midnight was headed up the the top deck to see the fireworks. It was an amazing night.