I came home from work at the end of september to find P looking very guilty. From the look on his face I could tell something had gone on, and a look of 'that' nature suggested money had been spent. After some flapping and stuttering, and much redness around the cheeks, I learned Prague was in our future. Ive wanted to go to Prague for a while, I came close a few years ago but it fell through at the last moment, and P had wanted to go for some time too. Our date of departure: 13 december. I was around 10 weeks pregnant when it was booked, we worked out I would be around 22/23 weeks gone by the time we flew (that was before our scan put us back 6 days). 13 weeks seemed a very long time to wait.
Eventually the day dawned, albeit rather too quickly for P who had been singing the Messiah the night before, down in Bath, and only got home around 1am (we had to be on the train by 6.20am). The journey to, and our progression through the airport was fairly quick and painless. We were a litle concerned my passport may be refused as it was in my maiden name, and didnt match the name on the booking. I took the marriage certificate, just incase, and was rather pleased to discover that you can travel on a passport under your maiden name for 12 months after marriage (phew). We found ourselves seats in a Costa(fortune) coffee shop right by the departure gates and indulged in a spot of brekky (tea and toast for P, hot choc and almond croissant for me).
We left a dull and foggy Birmingham Airport 30 mins later than scheduled (air traffic control were having a lazy monday) and soared off into the skies.... and were blinded by the sun as soon as we broke through the cloud layer. An hour later we were over deepest darkest Europe, and saw our first glimpse of snow. A further 40 mins later we touched down in a very snowy and rather chilly Prague (it was minus 7 celcius). After a delay in meeting our transport we arrived at the hotel at around 3.30pm, and immediately set out to explore (read that as 'went out to play in the snow'). We walked down to Wenceslas Square for a quick mooch, found Debenhams, M&S and C&A, and the beginnings of the Christmas Market, which also provided our supper.
We went for our first proper look around the following day, starting with the National Museum. They have a fab collection of natual history exhibits, skeletons and full size replicas of prehistoric beasties:
and some not so prehistoric beasties:
The Old Town Square was the absolute epitome of how I imagined Prague at Christmas would look; grand gothic and baroque-style buildings, the Christmas Market, horse drawn carriages and a huge Christmas tree, all finished off with inches of snow and huge fat snowflakes falling from the sky. It was really picturesque and quite lovely.
The most amazing part came on our penultimate night, when we were sat on the bed watching German TV. We were chatting about what we thought of our mini break, and would we come back, when we both felt the first proper kicks from the babies. I'd felt little flicks and pokes for a couple of weeks but nothing as definite as these. And they havent stopped since! Its a very odd feeling but also very reassuring. I'm sure that I wont be as keen in a few weeks time when they are almost too big to move around though...
No comments:
Post a Comment