We awoke this morning with a strong need for a coffee and a breakfast roll. The bed in the apartment is delightful. We slept well. No full German breakfast this morning, though. As was Ann’s desire we went down to the street and had a cappuccino and croissant. Sitting at an outside table on the street at a very non-touristy café, we watched the locals going to work. That seemed to satisfy us that retirement is delightful.

After a morning of seeing in this beautiful Baroque city, virtually unchanged for centuries, we bought lunch at the supermarket below the Square of the Republic and brought it home. I am eating a prepared sandwich of various sausages and cold deli type meats of unknown origin from a pig, steer or who knows what animal. To accent this there is a generous helping of mayonnaise. Also an asparagus spear, a broccoli floret and some red bell pepper were present. There was also a small dill pickle in there somewhere. My side dish was a bag of Lay’s potato chips – bacon flavored. Fortunately it is all being washed down with a half liter of Pilsner Urquell (for $0.95). How Eastern European does that lunch sound? Just like Pacific Northwest Fusion cuisine, right?

The weather has degenerated. Last night it poured for a while. Today it is cooler, windy and rain threatening. Temperature yesterday approached 90; today it might hit the low 60s. Guess which one of us is happy about that?

Ann is not able to make the train trip to Podebrady today. After walking across town to meet Zdenek she was completely exhausted and coughing up a lung. We rescheduled the train trip until tomorrow and I took her back to the apartment. The sick and tired lady then slept until the next morning. I ventured out on the town during the afternoon. I went through the town seeing all of the sights I had seen in my previous three times in this city. Doing this I realized Ann was not missing anything and the reason for stopping here was to see dear Zdenek again.

I met Z for dinner at 6:00 sans Ann. I returned back five hours later. We had a great evening. We walked around town with Z giving me a historical and personal perspective of his city. We stopped in at an underground pub for a velky pivo [large beer] which was $1.25 so Z would drink there. With the use of a Czech-English dictionary we were able to converse quite nicely. After the Pilsner Urquell we went to dinner at U Medvidku which means “At the little bear” – I don’t know why. We both had what was translated as Granny’s Sirloin. Now with the “beef is expensive in this country” attitude the meal consisted of two small medallions of beef about ¼ inch thick on a plate of gravy with five knedliky or dumplings. On the beef was a thin layer of cowberrys (I don’t know but like sour cranberry sauce), a little lemon curd with a thin sliced disk of lemon then a whipped cream dollop on the top.

Oddly it was spectacular and it was not just because we had two more large beers at the restaurant. These beers were Budweiser from Budweis. The #2 beer in the Czech Republic, much lighter and sweeter than Pilsner Urquell and is, in my opinion, not as full flavored.

Upon arriving back at the apartment, Ann was still in bed but hungry and wanted me to get some food. She noticed immediately that I did not have the black waterproof wind shirt I had when I left. So, back on the metro to again ride the rails. Once more with no ticket since only coins could be used to buy tickets from the machine (I did not have enough coin money but plenty of bills), no ticket seller was open and no store would make change for me. At the restaurant the wind shirt still lay on the bench next to the couple with whom we shared the dinner table. They were on their fifth large beers by my reckoning. Impressive. On the way back from the third metro ride in an hour (without ticket again) I had now beaten the “system” out of 14 X 3 Czech koruna (about $1.10) and risk fines of $100 each time. Who says I don’t gamble. I stopped at a pizza restaurant near our apartment as it was closing and got the dear sick lady some grub - a pizza with a fried egg on top.

Lesson for Day 4: You lose less stuff when your wife is well and Las Vegas gambling can be done in Prague also.