ISDCI Conference, Day 4

Yay for more talks! Or, at least, skipping them!

I got up early again for breakfast with my group, then we headed to the plenary speaker (15 minutes late... none of us wanted to move). I was struggling to stay awake. The lack of sleep and all the excitement of the trip was catching up to me.

After the morning talk, we went to the "Effector Molecules" morning section, where my boss gave her talk. With the exception of her talk, I was again fighting back the exhaustion during the talks. I had definitely planned on skipping the first afternoon session of talks to take a nap and recharge.

I never got the chance. During lunch, Louise mentioned that she and her daughter were going to skip out on all of the afternoon talks and go do their shopping. They leave Saturday for the U.S. and hadn't done their shopping yet. Then she mentioned that Laura and I could skip the sessions and do something, as well. We definitely took her up on her offer!

Laura and I ended up going to Old Town Square. Laura had found a couple of shopping areas she wanted to go to. Of course, I don't care about shopping, but whatever. It got me out of the talks AND I got to be in the city. She bought a few things, and I got some cookies, a dark chocolate mint bar, and some hard "rock candy". After looking around the Old Town area (showing her the places I visited yesterday during the tour and retaking pictures since it was raining yesterday), I showed her the St. Charles bridge since she wanted to see it. We didn't actually walk on it, but we saw it. Then we hopped on the subway to get back for the second poster session.

I had six more people come up to talk to me during the poster session, bringing the total to 11. I don't think that's too shabby at all!

Afterwards, we headed to an Italian restaurant (my night to pick) that one of our guide books said was one of the best Italian restaurants in the city. It ended up being just down from Old Town Square. I ordered a pasta that was made with what the waiter said was lasagna noodles cut into smaller strips. It also had shrimp, bacon, zucchini, tomatoes, and a sauce that I've never had before (and it wasn't listed in the menu, so I have no idea what it was). I thought it was delicious.

It amazes me how little to drink you get when you get food here. You only get like .2 mL or .33 mL of most non-alcoholic drinks, and you don't get refills. Like Laura said, it really puts our "super-size" mentality into perspective.

Italian food craving sated, it was back to the hotel for the night. Just one more day left of the conference, then it's off to Vienna!

I may not have a chance to post tomorrow night. We have our big gala dinner and might not return until midnight or later. If so, I'll probably go straight to bed since we leave for Vienna early in the morning. So if you don't hear from me, that's what happened.

(This post was actually posted at 10:39PM Prague time.)