an expensive cab ride

Posted on July 31, 2006 Updated on May 23, 2013

It’s about 3 weeks into our 4-month adventure and the heat wave continues. These countries are clearly not familiar with this type of weather because there is no air-conditioning anywhere.

After a 4 or so hour train trip from Vienna, sitting in a “non-smoking” part of the carriage, we needed to get fresh air FAST! Our heads were beginning to get cloudy from all the smoking in the other half of the carriage. Can someone explain to us how you can have a train carriage with smoking and non smoking separated by no physical partition?! The carriage becomes smoking then doesn’t it? But anyway, as the train pulled into Prague station, we couldn’t wait to leap off and inhale that good ole’ faithful thing called oxygen.

As we got off, we needed to exchange some euros to the Czech koruna (CZK). Converting to a different currency can be so confusing especially when they are in “higher” values. Once currency was changed, we were on our way out the exit when a big burly man approached us and asked us if we needed a cab. But before we could respond, he had “kindly” picked up my luggage and was walking towards his taxi. Picking up the pace, we made it to the car where he loaded us in and drove erratically to get us to the hotel. Alarm bells should have gone off in our head when he wouldn’t drive us to the front and instead dropped us across the road. He told us to get out and to pay 980 CZK. We quickly grabbed our luggage, handed over the money and he sped off. What a fabulous introduction to Prague. It wasn’t until afterwards that we did the maths and realised he charged us almost 40 Euros for  a 10 minute (if that) cab ride. We also found out later on that it should have cost less than HALF.  Oh well, lesson learnt and lucky it was only money!

Despite that we enjoyed the next few days visiting Prague Castle, Charles Bridge, Wenceslas Square, the Old Town and the famous Astronomical Clock.

Because we had also decided to pick up a lot of souvenirs along the way, we decided to ship them home. Let’s hope it gets there and doesn’t send us broke either!

View more photos of our trips at Photo Gallery.