The Flight

We left the Mercure at silly o'clock and retraced our route to the Purple Parking drop off which was only about 10 mins away.  Car duly parked, keys handed over and on the transfer bus which left within about 5 minutes.

When we arrived at the Terminal 3 Security Gate I had a momentary dilemma as I'm entitled to Fast Track through security and as yet Ian isn't; only joking - there was no way we were going to be separated.  We have our security procedure down to a fine art where one of us goes through first to wait for the bags to come out of the scanner and the other one stays behind to see them safely though.  We've done this ever since our friend David almost lost his Rolex by someone just picking it up from the tray.

The lounge had been open a short while by the time we arrived so the queue had cleared.  I proffered my BA Card to the young lady explaining it was the first time of using it, but all she wanted to see was our boarding passes.  "No, it's new - please do look at it" says I.  She laughed and commented that it had the BA 100 year's logo on it.

We've not been in this lounge before and it was considerably nicer than the two at T5, although champagne was still on request (not help yourself as at Gatwick last time).  Because we wouldn't be getting fed on the plane - no loss there, the flight breakfast is awful - we made sure we ate plenty of the little bacon rolls and pain au raisins to see us through.

I would of course have waited with Ian so we could board together, but for some reason we were both Group 2 and boarded first and had plenty of space for our one small case.  As I'd been able to reserve emergency exit row seats we had extra leg room, in fact as much room as sitting up front as no one sat in the middle seats either.  The flight was uneventful and only 2 hours, so before long we'd landed and were cleared through immigration.

We'd read in advance that over 70s are entitled to free public transport in Prague but thought we'd better double check so we stopped at the Tourist Info Booth in arrivals and the young lady confirmed this was the case and that Ian just needed to carry proof of eligibility (we thought Driving Licence was safer than Passport).  Based on our plans for the rest of the day we just needed to get a 90 min timed ticket for me (£1) which would cover the bus and metro journey to the hotel.  Lucky for us, she also sold them and could take credit card (unlike StP)

There are no barriers on the buses/trams or metro and the whole system is run on an honesty basis, although apparently there are inspectors around and the fines for not having a ticket are about £50. 

The bus ride was only about 10 mins and then a metro ride of about 15 mins including a change of line - lines run quite deep below ground as you can tell from the length of this escalator.

The stations aren't nearly as fancy as in StP, this was our nearest one.

I rather liked this stall of wooden kitchen implements on the station concourse.