Hooray for Budget Airlines!

Last night I flew from Split to Prague on one of Europe's new budget airlines: SkyEurope. The plane ticket cost me ~65 Euro, including taxes (expensive for budget airlines, frankly, but I timed my purchase wrong - still very cheap by U.S. standards), and cut a journey that would've taken ~3days by train down to a 1.5hr flight. Awesome.

Finding the airport was interesting. In the end, it really wasn't that big of a deal, but...no one told me how long it would take to get there, so I was kind of stressed out... Instead of taking an overpriced taxi to the "Split airport" (which is really not in Split, and is closer to Trogir), I opted to take a bus for the bargain price of 15Kuna (2Euro). I had to find the local bus station in Split, take the bus headed to Trogir and figure out where to airport stop was with enough time to still make it off the bus w/my backpack. Well, it turns out that it's ~45min bus ride from the transit station to the airport. That little tidbit would've been good for the information people in Split (who told me what bus to take) to pass along, so that I didn't spend the entire ride scanning for signs of an airport. But I digress...

The SkyEurope team was great. They were young (early 20's, maybe), multi-lingual, and efficient. The plane was a newish Boeing that made a few odd noises in-flight, but landed all the same. My only complaint - being 5'9" tall - is that the seats were made for midgets (i.e. there was no hope of comfortably resting my head). Thankfully, however, it wasn't a full flight - so I had a bit more room. Overall, I would definitely fly them again.

By the time I got in to Prague, collected my luggage, found a toilet and an ATM, etc., it was ~11pm. There was no way I was going to futz w/public transportation to find a hostel in an unfamiliar city where I don't speak the language at that time on Saturday night; instead, I sprang for a taxi (519 Koruna, or ~$23-25USD). In my mind, it was totally money well spent.

I'll write about Prague, later, but... This is, easily, the nicest hostel I've stayed at yet; they certainly have the best breakfast. ...and that's important! :)