The Glamorous Life

At every new stop one of the first chores is to find Internet access. It might be at the hotel, but it might not be. Some of the Internet cafes are really nice, and others are a bit iffy. I remember sitting in an Internet cafe in Aurangabad, India taking care of staffing issues and, with the exception of the electricity in the city giving out every twenty minutes or so, the system worked pretty well. There was a great Internet cafe (albeit a bit too expensive for my blood) right around the corner from the Hotel Wandl in Vienna - the great advantage was that you could get a melange brought to your little table while typing away. I spent six hours propped up in front of a big window in an Internet cafe in Madrid, which provided a great location for taking care of business and also watching the world go by. In Budapest I was staying at the Mercure Budapest Buda, which was cheap as long as you didn't get wifi (or eat breakfast). They essentially wanted $10 an hour for wifi or a special deal of around $40 a day. Instead, I went across the street to a little Internet cafe, although calling it a cafe probably does disservice to the work cafe. That said, Internet access there was only around $1.50 an hour. You went up the stairs past the Lego store and took a sharp left. There was a round table with computers, which half the time was in complete darkness. While all of the computers worked, only one worked really well (it's the one on the right in the picture - I still have very fond memories of that computer).