May 8

Left today Sacramento to Chicago - United Air. Nothing was free except the bathroom. I expect to see them making us pay for that next.

Got into Chicago 1 hour late and had to run to our connecting flight to Munich. Just made it as they were about to close the doors. Phew! Lufthansa. Free everything and food. German beer.

Munich to Prague just a short 40 minute hop and we are in Czech.

We had called all our credit card companies to notify them we would be traveling in Czech and not hassle our spending limits. They all confirmed. So of course at the car rental we were denied use of our first choice of credit card with no international fees due to security problems with our card being used in Europe. Had to use our second choice. Anyway, we were off to the mountains in an 9 seater Luxury van made by Peugeot with a built in GPS. Drove out of Prague without getting lost. We had the battle of the gps going, we hooked up the gps we brought with us, which we had borrowed from our from a friend and used the one in the car. We wanted to see which one worked the best for us. One spoke too soft and the map is hard to read and the other one did give us directions a few minutes earlier.So it looks like we will have dueling voices for awhile.

We arrived at our very quaint apartment in the mountains in Janov. We were met by the owners very friendly daughter, Marika, who checked us in. We were her very first Americans and her very first Bookings.com customer! She was very pleased to see her listing worked!

After getting all our luggage into our apartment, we headed into town to go grocery shopping. That is always so much fun in Czech. We get to see so many foods we are not used to back at home. We loaded up on sausages, bread and munchies. We decided to make spaghetti for dinner. We used a minced meat which looked like chicken, some nice gluten free spiral noodles and a tomato sauce (which we could not read). It all tasted fine for our first meal.

After reading emails, we crashed and slept like the dead.

J-Me and Guy are the owners of Wild Things Beads, a small family run import business specializing in Czech glass beads and buttons and finding the unusual to bring to their warehouse. They also run working bead tours to Jablonec and Hong Kong. Their warehouse is located deep in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California, and can be reached by phone at (530)743 1339 or on the web at www.wildthingsbeads.com. They are also open by appointment at their warehouse.