Day 0: New York in Prague and the Danube Travel Log

We were supposed to go on a red-eye flight at 8:30pm. 8 hours flight + 6 hours time difference would put us in Prague at 10:30am the next day. We took an Uber to our train station and took the LIRR to Jamaica to use the airtrain. I was most shocked that the airtrain turnstile hadn’t been updated to the OMNY system, so I had to buy an old style metro card, which was a hassle because the ticketing machine promptly crashed after I fed it money. At least my credit card wasn’t in it. So after metrocard take two, (and La Professeure figuring out how to file a claim to get back my lost metro card), we made our way to Terminal 2 of JFK.

There was a period of about half a year while I worked at the education tech company where I had to fly to Durham NC twice a month for sprint planning, and I always fly out of Terminal 2. It quickly became my least favourite terminal. We arrived at JFK at 4:30, cleared security in an hour, and then ate at a sit-down restaurant Duo Amici till our boarding time. (We had to move from the bar to a table because of a loud talker next to us), but the staff was very accommodating. La Professeure did not like her food (some vegan bowl I think) so ended up eating some of mine (I ordered a kids-meal, which consists of a cheese burger and fries that was definitely not kid-sized, but no drinks due to the fact that I am not actually a kid), so we got a cheesecake, which turns out one of the best - it was tasted like a creme-brulee on cake.

Air travel these days is iffy, and we expected our flight to be delayed and wouldn’t have been too surprised if it got cancelled. So we were grateful that it was only delayed by 2 ½ hours (the plane got in late). The plane pushed faster in flight, so when we arrived we were only 2 hours late. The flight was smooth; between football weekly podcast, 538 politics podcast, and reading Thomas Qualstoff’s memoir, I could easily pass the time. But the best sleeping aid was recordings of myself.

We got on our Uber at 3pm and arrived at 12:30pm the next day, so we were “on the road” for 15 1/2 hours - but 6 of those hours involved sitting at Terminal 2 doing nothing.

Last updated August 21, 2022