Home again, home again, jiggety-jig!

So I flew back into Glasgow yesterday.

A week and a half in Prague was the best of ways to start 2009. As if visiting a beautiful centre of European history and culture replete with sights to delight the heart of any wargaming geek wasn't enough, staying with Bill and his family meant that I had friends for company, and their home as a base from which to set out on my tourist escapades. This already best of both worlds was topped off by, among other things, watching the first season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

There were also more games - of course, but they're for another time.

Travel is said to broaden the mind, a point I've heard some contest in the face of modern mass tourism and the gap year. Departing Prague with a good few more levels of Tourist under my belt, and passing smoothly through Ruzyně and Stanstead airports to face one of my greatest fears - takeoff, I mused on what it meant for me to have become a seasoned traveller after all these years. Enjoying flying as it mostly turned out.

Faced for some weeks with 4 flights instead of the 2 I'd at first tried to get away with, as December counted down I'd found myself thinking increasingly often of that moment when there's just no getting off; when - touchpaper lit - the roaring engines send that highly-stressed thin steel tube hurtling down the runway to hurl itself skyward; a moment that reminds me above all of nature's laws of probability. But when you're up there? Oh my. I absolutely love the view.

So, flying out late December on my late-booked (and therefore not really all that cheap) easyJet Eurobus I briefly lamented not paying the special Speedy Boarding premium for the sake of ensuring my choice of a window seat. I needn't've worried though, as I soon found out. The trick turns out to be simply boarding via the rear door, which ensured me window seats on all flights even when I was in the last-called B boarding group 3 times.

Longtime readers might remember my last flight into Prague, when I finally knew that the view was worth those takeoffs. This trip's outward flight was marked by the snow on the heights during an afternoon's crossing into a landing in a winter's quickly darkening night. What I didn't know was how all that snow would hit the lowlands a week later.

I had a brilliant time in Prague, a better start to 2009 I couldn't've hoped for. Expect more. ;)