(12 Oct 2014, 6:39 pm)Dan wrote I'm going to Prague for four days in December (by Jet2), and, including all of the costs for the activities we're doing there and £100 which has been allocated for day/evening meals, I've got the trip to £400 and I spent Thursday booking certain things.
Really looking forward to it - our Business Studies teacher has done two trips to Prague with previous schools he has taught at, and he said that a starter of a bowl of soup with a loaf of bread, steak and chips, a knickerbocker glory-like dessert and a pint cost him £2.10 in equivalent GBP.

Now that I've returned, thought it would be good to have a bit of a write-up on here to tell you all what I've been getting up to...

The Media Studies teacher at my school has been trying to get this trip off the ground for years, as she'd never been to Prague before and she knew of a couple of Media-related activities which students could get involved in. I helped get the trip off the ground as I hadn't been to Prague either, and when I discovered that our new Business Studies teacher had already taken two groups of students in previous schools he has taught at, I asked if he'd like to help me organise it and also attend. Alas - the trip, which was primarily intended as a Media Studies and Business Studies educational trip (but was classed as a 'cultural trip' to allow Sixth Form students who study neither of those subjects to attend), took place between Sunday 14th December and Thursday 18th December.

We flew out with Jet2 on Sunday, after spending three hours in the airport. The flight was quick and comfortable, and we departed and arrived more-or-less on-time. Upon arrival in Prague, we travelled to our hotel (the Admiral Botel) which was located approximately 30 minutes away from the airport. A private-hire minibus had been organised to take us there, and it was a Ford Transit minibus. After checking in and unpacking, we decided to sample the restaurant there... It was quite a fancy restaurant with some slap-up meals. As Sixth Form students with consent from parents, we were allowed to consume a "small" amount of alcohol with our meals, so the group of nine opted for cocktails. I've never really been one to drink cocktails, and one of the other two lads on the trip wasn't either. He didn't really like many of the cocktails meaning that he passed them to me every time (which I certainly didn't complain about!) After the meal, we went back to our rooms. Alcohol usually makes me tired after a while which is the main reason why I had quite a few cocktails, but unfortunately, even that didn't help me get to sleep... I had about three or four hours sleep, meaning that I was quite irritable when I woke up the following morning.

After a buffet-style breakfast in the hotel (which consisted of hotdog-like sausages, eggs, cereal, cakes, etc), we walked to the Staropromen Brewery for a tour. This tour was meant to assist Business Studies students so we could get a feel for what the production of alcohol (and in turn other products) was like. It ended with a free sample, and as not many of us were keen, the half-pint glasses were shared between the Business Studies teacher and a student. After the brewery tour, we had a tour of the city on-foot. We saved some money by not having to pay for a 'private tour', given that the teacher knew the city inside and out and could do this himself. This tour was mainly on foot, but we did use trams in places. We had remote supervision in places, meaning that a lot of us ended up going into bars and having a few more drinks, before a boat tour at 16:00. After the hour-long boat tour, we had remote supervision for an evening meal, before returning to the hotel. We discovered that we were the only people on that floor of the hotel which we took advantage of. Despite the ruling being clear that boys were not allowed in girls rooms and vice versa, a 'private session' took place in one of the girls' rooms which was rather large indeed as four were sleeping in it.

On Tuesday morning, we had breakfast in the hotel and took a tram to Vodickova, before walking to the Prague Post offices. The Prague Post actually advised us to go to the wrong place, so after arrival at the Prague Post, we had a tour of the city instead. After a tour, we used the tram to get to the Barrandov Film Studios. Serving as another Media Studies tour, this studio housed over 130,000 costumes, props and film sets. It was very interesting to walk around and see everything - but some of the girls were a little disheartened that they couldn't try any of the costumes on! After this tour, we returned to Smichovske nadrazi station by tram and then took the underground Metro to Mustek, returning to Wenceslas Square for remote supervision and an evening meal, prior to a 90-minute long 'ghost tour' starting at 20:00. Rather inebriated from the meal which took place beforehand, one of the lads ended up vomiting inside of one of the dungeons in the Astronomical Clock, so we hurried off back to the hotel via Metro after this to get him to bed (while everyone else carried on the session! ) 

We were all quite tired on Wednesday, meaning that we didn't have our planned tour of the city on the morning. Instead; we had a lie in, breakfast in the hotel, and then free time in the hotel afterwards. So that I didn't have too much TV to catch up on when I got back to the UK, I watched the season finale of Geordie Shore during this time. A couple of others went to McDonalds for the second round of breakfast, and others just slept. At 12:30, a Mercedes Sprinter minibus with reclining seats turned up to take us to the Skoda Factory. It was about an hour away from the hotel, and Skoda were celebrating their millionth car sold this year (last year only sold circa 900,000). An advertisement of some sort was being filmed and it was full of up-beat music and the atmosphere was very good indeed. We saw the history of Skoda, right from the first bike that they created up to their most recent car, and then had a tour of the factory so we could see the manufacturing process. We had to use our minibus to move around the different sections of the factory as it's so big, and I managed to see some Arriva minibuses, buses and coaches during this time. I even saw an Arriva coach which seemed to carry a MAX-like coloured livery - don't know if it was actually MAX or not though as a lot of their coaches were just in plain white, yellow etc and didn't carry an Arriva livery at all. The minibus took us back to Old Town after that, and we had remote supervision for an evening meal. Unlike the nights prior, we (teachers and students) all decided to have a meal together. We finished up in this Czech restaurant quite quickly, so we had plenty of time to buy some souvenirs until about 21:00 when we took the Metro back to the hotel. A drunken man fell over on the escalators at Mustek and ended up getting trapped at the bottom. Everyone ended up piling on top of him as he tripped them up until someone pressed the emergency stop button for the escalators. Our Media Studies teacher was quite worried about us being out at that time to start with, knowing that Prague's "Red Light District" comes into fruition at night, so this shook her up quite a bit, but we all got back to the hotel safe and sound.

We had another lie in on Thursday, and left the hotel at 11:00 after breakfast in the hotel. The same Ford Transit minibus picked us up, and we had remote supervision within the airport for about two hours prior to the flight departing. It landed on-time despite being a rather shaky landing due to the strong winds in Newcastle, and this allowed me to sample one of the Newcastle Airport buses too! I got on the Metro at about 15:15 meaning that I ended up catching all the scholars going home, but still managed to watch a bit of Waterloo Road on BBC iPlayer.


Had a very good time, and I am grateful to the teachers for taking us. I was incredibly surprised at the fact that only one bar attempted to ID us, and we even got served in a shop which was only selling alcohol, tobacco and cannabis... It was a rather worrying prospect really. Although both of the other lads who were on the trip were 18 and could have bought alcohol regardless, the younger of the two looks as though he is 14 or so, yet he still got served for a massive bottle of vodka... Even Jet2 didn't bother to ID us on the plane!
I did manage to get one bus photo while I was there - this can be viewed below:
Martin Uher: 1154 / 9S37414 by danielgrahamm, on Flickr