Prague and then Home

Austin and I landed in Prague and there were a couple of drivers there to pick us up.

I got to the hotel and Rick was standing there in the lobby waiting for me. It was great to see him. I checked in and dumped my luggage in the room and joined Rick, Miles, Priti and Elaine for breakfast. Evan and Tom had gotten delayed coming out of Moscow and missed their flights in London. After we got done eating, I went up to the meeting room and joined Andrea and Stephan who were already starting to setup the equipment. After working for most of the afternoon I was about 90% done and at a stand-still till the room was finished being set by the hotel. I was really dragging by then, and decided to go and take a nap so that I could have some energy for dinner.

When I came back down to the room a couple of hours later, Evan was there and was already half finished with the work that I had left to do. That was a nice surprise. We finished up and met down in the hotel bar for a drink before dinner. I could see that no one was in a real rush to go eat, and finally Rick, Tom and I bailed from the group to go get some food. 

We walked to the historic square which was pretty close to the hotel. Tom hadn't been to Prague before but has traveled extensively and I am sure he was tired of Rick and I telling him how cool everything was. We strolled around and found a little Czech place to eat and had a nice quiet dinner. Afterwards, we walked over to the Charles Bridge and walked across to take in the views. It was really nice and not crowded at all. I was feeling great because of my little afternoon nap, but didn't want to push it, so we went back to the hotel and I got a good nights rest. 

Call was at 7:00 am and the show started at 8:30 am. It was a short day and ended around 12:30. we grabbed some lunch and then went to help Andrea and Stephan strike the gear and load it into the truck. By this time, we were all pretty tired and after a farewell drink with Andrea, I went back to my room for another nap. 

It was really hard to get up from this nap, but I did, and we all met in the lobby to head to dinner at our favorite restaurant in Prague called "Cartouche"

It is a medieval restaurant in the basement of an old building and there are rough cut timber tables, brick walls, a huge wood fired oven where your food gets cooked, and about 80 percent of the restaurant is lit by candle light. They keep replacing the candles and never disturb the wax, so there is this beautiful mound of wax that has dripped off each candle placement. It is such a great restaurant and the food is outstanding. We all got huge platters of meat for entrees. Rick and I shared the medieval meet platter and ate until we were sick. At the end of the meal, I had this amazing desert of cheesecake and vanilla ice cream over warm strawberries with hardened caramel on top. It was just ridiculously good, and at the end of the meal we had a great conversation about a plan to replace some equipment that we needed.

We walked around the square and did a little shopping while Evan and Tom snapped some photos. I had decided that I needed to be back at the hotel by 11:00 pm because I had a very early departure from the hotel in the morning. We all met back at the hotel for a drink and I got to say goodbye to Miles and Priti as well as the rest of the boys. I went up to my room about midnight and packed my luggage. I had developed a pretty painful headache in the last 15 minute and was glad to be able to get into bed.

The alarm went off at 3:15 am and I was pretty confused as to what that annoying sound was. At the same time the phone started ringing and I got up to try and make it all stop. Then the clouds started lifting and I realized what was happening, shut the phone off.. took the wake up call, and then got ready to go. My driver was waiting for me and gave me a quick trip to the airport. At 4:00 in the morning, it only took about 15 minutes to get there, and I checked in and got a quick bite to eat. 

The flight to Frankfurt was pretty quick… it only took an hour and fifteen minutes or so, and then I had about a 5 hour lay over. I went to the Lufthansa club, and got a couple of free cokes, and then wandered the terminal a bit. I plopped down somewhere and watched the movie Avatar to kill some time. Just before I boarded the flight from Frankfurt to Washington DC, I went and got a little Pizza and wolfed it down. The food on the plane wasn't going to be that good, and I figured if I could just get on board and get to sleep, it would be the best thing I could do.

I was successful and woke up with only about an hour left on the flight, and I felt pretty refreshed. When I got off the plane and went towards Customs and Immigration, it was really crowded and as I turned the corner, I could see I was towards the back of the line behind what was about 1000 people. The Customs staff were doing a very poor job of getting people where they needed to go and kept saying that the line was moving pretty quickly. They only had six Immigration officers in the booths and long story short… it took almost 2 hours to get through. I had plenty of time though, so it was nice to not have to stress. My flight to Sacramento left on time, and I landed, got my bags took the shuttle to the economy parking lot and got home around 11:30 pm. 28 hours and 41 minutes since I left the hotel in Prague, I threw my clothes from this trip in the laundry and went to bed because I have a 2:00 pm flight tomorrow to Phoenix for another show. And this is Life In The Corporate Theater.