Prague Day 4 - flying to Paris, renting a car to drive to Giverny

We've been in the countryside of France for a few days, where the internet is sloooowww and spotty, so I haven't been able to post anything. It took 10 minutes to upload 50% of a photo, so you figure how long it'd take to upload 50 pictures :T

10/17/2014

After a leisurely breakfast, we went upstairs to pack. I’d booked a shuttle from prague-airport-transfers.com for 10am. We came down a little early to weigh our luggage—the hotel has a handy scale that hooks onto your luggage. You pull the weight up, and it’s scales how much your luggage is. Everything was barely under the weight limit.

Aside from our arrival at the train station in Prague, where we encountered those bitchy train station employees, our experience has been like a dream. That first morning, man, I vowed I’d never come back to this god-forsaken city. But everyone else has been super nice (maybe because we’ve only encountered the service sector after that). K+K Fenix hotel’s service has been top notch, bar none. I’ve never encountered such good service—they’re better than Fairmont, Intercontinental, Sofitel combined (especially Sofitel). The shuttle driver was really nice too. 

Tipping in Prague is much like Budapest. 10% is standard, and if you indicate you want to pay by credit card, they’ll come over to your table with the machine and you tell them how much to charge, including tip. 

On the drive over to the airport, we realized how lucky we were this past several days in Prague. Aside from the first day we arrived in Prague, where it was raining heavily and we had to lug our luggage all across town to the hotel (actually only a 5 minute walk…but it felt like an hour’s walk in the rain), it’s been pretty clear weather all around. It started raining just when we entered Lobkowicz Palace, but by the we exited, the rain had cleared up. This happened every day of our journey—we missed the rain at every turn. However, as we drove to the airport, it was pouring. We thought it was 7am in the morning, it was so dark and cloudy. But it was really 10am.

When we arrived at Vaclav Havel airport (used to be called Ruzyne), symbol PRG, we checked into Czech Airlines for our flight to Paris. I had booked on Smartwings—they codeshare with Czech Airlines, which also codeshares with Delta. I was nervous because online, a lot of people complain about Smartwings for being notoriously late…and our hotel in France states that after 9pm, there won’t be an attendant on duty, so advanced notification needs to be made if you arrive after 9pm. The flight is supposed to arrive at 2:15pm in Charles de Gaulle and we still had to drive over to the hotel, so I was apprehensive if anything went wrong. But the flight is operated by Czech Airlines, which is very punctual. Albeit expensive. The same ticket on Czech is $500 USD whereas if you purchase on Smartwings, it’s $136 including tax. However, you don’t get as much luggage allowance as if you’d bought from Czech Airlines. Smartwings lists a strict 5kg allowance for carry-ons, and you only get one carry-on, including purse/laptops. For check-in luggage, it’s 15kg. Anything over, 30 euro fee, please.

If you’d bought from Czech Airlines, it’s 8kg for carry-on and 2*23kg check-ins. But you’d also overpay by $350 per person. So that’s why we were weighing our luggage at the hotel so religiously this morning. As it turns out, our check-in luggage came in at 14.9, 15.3, 14.8, 14.7. Yay! Our carry-on baggage all came in right at the 4.5 kg mark, so it was a happy day J We were especially worried because we left SFO with our luggage coming in around 40 lbs. Dad and mine were both 49 lbs leaving SFO.

Arriving at Paris CDG, lo and behold, look who’s Number 1! 

…On the conveyor belt, not in real life :P Angel's green luggage was the first to come out. That's never happened before! With China Airlines, we're usually the last for some reason.

I booked a minivan with Hertz and it was a breeze picking up the rental car at Charles de Gaulle. We had bought a Garmin gps right before this trip, specifically to use in France (we also bought Garmin’s France gps map chip thingy). And boy are we glad we did. The van’s gps wasn’t working very well—it couldn’t understand the hotel address. Garmin wasn’t picking up the satellite signal at the airport, but it’s because the car rental pick-up area is underneath a bridge. After I started driving, though, Garmin gave very clear directions on how to get to the hotel and we arrived rather smoothly…2 hours later. We drove through tiny, tiny villages with tidy flower arrangements and stone cottages that looked like they’d been built in the last few centuries, endless hills of grass with sheep and cows roaming about.

After checking in, we immediately set about looking for a supermarket, as it was 6pm at the time. We found a Carrefour via google maps, but as we were driving to it, we found a sign to go to Leader Price supermarket. Mom really likes their almond gateux, so we decided to take a detour. But the Leader Price was closed. Angel spotted a nearby E LeClerc poster, so ok, we’ll go there (it was a suggestion from the front desk, though we never heard of this supermarket before). E LeClerc is HUGE. It’s like Costco! Or Carrefour in Taiwan! They sell everything, from big screen TVs to clothes and boots, to toys and bikes, and then there’s the supermarket itself. Walking in, I immediately spotted a sign for Lindt chocolates. Only my French sucks, so I couldn’t understand what it said except buy 1…get 2 free? Or get 2^nd free? Doesn’t matter, does it, cuz it’s a really good deal! At 2.1 euro per bar, then get another free…you can’t even get a chocolate bar for that much in the US! So we loaded up on baby’s favorite flavor:

Lindt Deliche Pistache (dark chocolate pistachio mousse)