Prague day 7

Rapidly running out of clothes, having tried to ‘pack light’ (can’t account for the other 259kg?!).  So I’ll just find somewhere to throw some laundry in and out.  HA!  Laundromats hardly exist in Prague.  They don’t earn enough money to pay high rents.  There are 3 that I find on line, and I’ll ask the hotel what they recommend too.  I pack my washing in my little carry on luggage suitcase, ready to wheel to my destination.  Now, since my budget hotel has no safe in the room, my lil’ suitcase has been a proxy ‘safe’ because it has a combination lock.  And I even remember the combination (yes this is astounding- just ask my husband about me and pin codes/ passwords/ combinations...).  So fine, I’ll just cunningly take all my valuables with me in my lil’ suitcase to laundromat.  I am picturing having to sit there for about an hour or so, whilst typing my blog etc. with the wifi they are sure to have. 

So I ask the hotel reception where is good to go.  He says the nearest one is 2 tram stops away.  I practically make him do a Powerpoint of exactly which tram stop, which tram, on which side of the road, the name of the stop where I must disembark, the name of the laundromat, the colour of the building, etc. etc. so I don't end up lost in a ghetto somewhere. I should have been a little suspicious when he said I’d have to look really hard for the sign- it’s a restaurant, and the laundry aspect is written very small on the building.  Okaaaaay.  But I don’t actually have time to get to the other one he mentions, which is quite far.  So I set off to search for the spot, and I find it with ease.  It’s a slightly seedy part of town. The young woman I find does not speak much English.  There is no wifi.  It’s a pub with some washing machines crammed in a passageway. I manage to semaphore that I want to go ahead, and that I need washing powder.  She says it’ll take 2 hours (!!) and I am welcome to stay and have a drink, or go and come back.  She will put it in the drier for me and I can leave my wheely suitcase there.  Sigh.  I have things to do... I can’t sit there for 2h!!  And meeting Antonia for lunch so want to get it all done by then! So I leave it all in her hands and head off to change money etc.

Do all the boring admin, and while busy, realise that I have left all my valuables in the wheely suitcase, which is in the passage in the pub in the seedy part of town!!! Aaaaackk!!  Rush as much as I can and get back there in about 90 min.  Surely 2h is an estimate and it’ll be done by now. I mean who has ever heard of washing/ drying taking 2h!  Valuables are still there! I try and abort the drier to check the load.  HA.  Must be from the communist era- no options/ inbetweens- just on or off, and until the timer goes, it is decidedly ‘on’.  So I sit there for 20 min, gazing at the graffiti and overhead railway bridge.  Valuables are still there! EVENTUALLY it ends.  I pull my washing out of the drier, and in so doing, empty out all my underwear into the passage in the pub in the seedy part of town. Sigh. Now many of you will know that there are 2 kinds of dry one can choose on driers- iron dry or cupboard dry.  A new one- Communist Dry.  Which amounts to one's clothes being the texture of papyrus and creased forever in the way they have been creased- think of how they make pleats- by heating fabric into desired pattern?  

Now an hour late for lunch.  Decide to have takeout and rather meet Antonia and Jörg for the city tour at 3. We are to meet at the Astronomical clock (stars, not cost) in the Old Town Square.  It’s s glorious day and I stroll along the riverside towards the general vicinity of the Square.  I head into a maze of little cobbled roads, which are really pretty and cute and charming.  I don’t really know where I am going, but I am following a herd of tourists.  I don’t know anything about the clock, or the town square at all, the guidebook being in CT.  And so much the better, because when I found the town square I knew it instantly, and I was blown away.  Embolic showers of glorious amazingness.  Prague has been pretty so far, but this is off the charts.  It’s a film set made out of confectionary. I have a mad urge to lie down on the cobblestones and make delirious snow angels. Saved from myself by Antonia’s arrival. 

We watch the Astronomical clock strike 3pm and I realise that it must, in fact, be/ have been astronomically expensive to make/ maintain. It has a whole little show with moving figures and everything.  Find our tour guide, Andrew.  He is a Canadian from Canadia too.  He fancies himself a kind of Mont Matré struggling artist, with his long red beard, and tales of living on the breadline as a musician.  I swear he has roots in his beard.  I mean, yes, all hair has roots, but I think he actually dyes his beard a russet colour... Bald on top, so can’t compare...  he takes us on a kind of back-route tour, which is great, only it could have been half the duration, had he not kept telling us about himself. Ankle not loving all the standing around.  After a visit to a microbrewery, I decide to peel off and head home, uncertain how much more of Andrew’s life I will be forced to listen to.

Burger and ankle ice for supper at hotel.  One more sleep till I see my man!  One more sleep till I relocate to a nicer hotel!