(Revised and edited). Either I jinxed it by bragging about it, but Frankfurt is where karma goes to die. We landed, and taxied and taxied, but Denver is like that. Except when we were done the wheeled up a set of boarding stairs and we deplaned into what looked like a maintenance yard and all boarded busses for the ride to the terminal. Now I haven’t deplaned and walked in since the early years in Casper or flying Pilgrim Airlines into Groton. I really expected for Frankfurt to be better.
The bus took 20 minutes driving all around the airport to unload us near Gate C1. We knew that our flight would leave from A35; but wait there’s more. As we trooped thru terminal, we were herded into a set machines designed to read your passport, collect a photo and read your fingerprints to establish a firm bio-signature of you. Except it didn’t work very well. Kate’s machine read her passport and took a picture but choked. Mine had trouble even reading the passport. Since they failed so we all got herded through corridors over to a set of mazes feeding into booths with police officers doing regular screening and collecting fingerprints. We spent two and a half hours weaving back and forth like old school Disney lines. Now we had a 4-hour layover, but other passengers were freaking out. And this was still in terminal A. I counted that there were 14 booths with 4 of them occupied. They opened two more after our first hour in line. When we got to the boot the police had the usual questions, purpose of visit, how long we were staying (in the EU), etc.
Also, this fun event had taken us outside the containment area, so we all got rescreened and came back in at the end of terminal C. This only took about 15 minutes, so with all that done we followed the signs through terminal B, up and down to a long tunnel to Terminal A. We finally made it to the Lufthansa Longue where we’re waiting for closer to the boarding time. We boarded about 45-minutes late due to late arrival of our older Airbus-345 (think 737-ish).
One interesting thing was that to create a first-class section, the blocked off the middle seats of each 6-row section with a tray table like section bolted to the seat arms. On the 90-minute flight they did a full lunch and drink service. I discovered that I don’t particularly like hummus (I think it comes from the Akkadian word for “failed at the hunt”.) and I settled for water to drink. I did have a double gin & tonic on the big flight but by this time I was tired, numb and was basically done for the day. I regret to say I am no alcoholic, I will have to pass the baton to Jan.
When we exited the plane (at a regular gate) we got our luggage and walked out and found the Viking guide who has us step aside with the other guests while he collected passengers.
The driver he paired us up with was man about my age who spoke a reasonably fair version of English who was very ebullient and gave us a tour of the city as we drove to the hotel. Prague is a very historic city that apparently avoided much of unintended renovations associated with WW-II. It has huge 3-5 story ancient buildings that are still used. We even talked about the Prague Spring, which he and I both still remember.
The Augustinian Hotel (click the link, really) was named after the Augustinian Monastery that still operates out of part of the hotel. The before and after parts of the tour let you select luxury or more pedestrian hotels. I think by the time I booked it only the luxury selection was available. On reconsideration, I think I’m glad I booked the Augustinian, like with airfare at this age of my life, if it’s worth going, it’s worth going first-class. We are here for three-days, leaving on Thursday morning for the 6–8 hour bus ride to Budapest. There will be a couple of hour-long breaks for lunch, etc. We have a 4-hour walking tour of Prague scheduled for this morning, we’ll see how we do on it and maybe schedule other events, dinners, etc. later.
In Amsterdam we also have three days after the cruise. Right now, we are scheduled for the Van Gogh Museum and a walking tour. I also want to stop by the Nieuw Kirk sometime.
We’re due down at the Front Desk for our walking tour.