I’m supposed to be a seasoned traveler, right? Seven continents under my belt, traveled all over the place alone and with Rudder, even solo international travel. So why is it that I so often get sickish right before a planned trip? Tomorrow Prague, today queasy. (In this particular case, it might possibly be related to the past rather than the future: yesterday hamburger that had been in the fridge for a week.)
I do miss living twenty minutes from an international airport; tomorrow we get to leave at an hour when it’s still dark, which at this latitude in July is ungodly early, to catch a train to Amsterdam. Unfortunately that early there are no direct trains to Schiphol so we really do have to catch a train to A’dam, then change trains to the airport. Prague hotels seem to be fairly cheap compared to other big cities, so we get to stay in what looks like a really spiffy place. Hopefully a really spiffy place with early check-in times and good beds; I think I may want a nap by the time we get there, though more likely they’ll toss us back out onto the streets for a few hours. I’ve wanted to see Prague since I started hearing about it just after the Velvet Revolution, when it became such a magnet for foreigners from everywhere that it kept being compared to Paris in Scott and Zelda’s time. Given our usual sightseeing proclivities, though, we’ll visit a lot more castles and cathedrals than coffeehouses.
I did leave the SnB last night in time to get enough sleep. It’s a much smaller group than the one in the Phoenix area, which kept splitting into smaller groups meeting in every part of the city. The nucleus of this group seems to be four thirtyish women who are friends and one older woman. I’m right in the middle. The younger women have been doing more crocheting than knitting, the opposite of what I saw in the US. Funny: the group’s founder mentioned that she’d looked inthe Stitch’n’Bitch Nation book to see the picture of my old group. For any US knitters who want a return view, you can see two pictures of us from last night here. (Scroll down to Photos and Videos; it’s the leftmost two.)
Knitting progress: the body of my Meadsow Flowers shawl is entirely done and ready for the border. I’m doing the current pair of socks on DPNs instead of my usual two circs. Can’t say I like this as well; it’s a bit like wrestling a porcupine. But I’m getting a bit better at keeping the spare needles out of my way and will probably stick with this method through these socks.
Also, I only realized yesterday: Prague is in the Czech Republic. The Czech Republic is presumably where Czech glass beads come from. Bead-shopping opportunities are entirely likely.