Eastern European soiree

First of all, big sorry this is so long coming, you've all been very patient, maybe gave you some time to catch up on the posts you skimmed over? hmmm? Anyhow, will be all up to date soon, we have good internet connection where we are at the moment!


On Charles Bridge in Prague
Old Jewish Synagogue with a graveyard behind it
Up at the Castle, trying to get something interesting in the view behind us but it just wasn't happening!

Climbing up to Prague Castle.
Part of Prague's main town square

One of Nicks panographs (he bought photoshop 4 in Nepal) of the River Vlatva in Prague

Prague, Czech Republik
8th June

We arrived in Prague just in time for dinner... and most things were closed and it was deathly quiet, I was expecting, despite it being Monday night, that Prague would be partying on with drunk English lads roaming around, but no, it was peaceful and quiet so we got a Gyro for dinner and headed to the hostel.

9th June

We spent the day 'seeing the sights' we walked to the town square, via a little market that was selling nice watercolour paintings of Pargue. We bought one then proceeded to see them for sale everywhere all day for like double the price, I think we did well. Then we headed into the Jewish ghetto area (which wasn't particularly ghetto) saw a cool synagogue and then headed over the Vlatva to the 'older' side of town. Before heading up the hill to the castle we stopped for some lunch, all the buildings on this side of Prague have these kind of caverous interiors, low ceilings and everything is wood. We had some interesting food- I had Nuremburg sausages with sauerkraut and mustard and Nick had a Roma-style pork with red pepper sauce- it was delicious! Prague castle was big and castle-ish, but it was the view from Prague castle that was truly amazing. We hung around people watching and taking photos for a while then headed back down the hill towards Charles Bridge, FYI on the way we had this amazing fruit smoothie, strawberry, mint, lime and ice... make one, its delicious! By this time (we had started out early) Charles Bridge was like teeming with people... ughh tourists :D Going back through the town square it was also bursting with people, it was the first place we'd been that was super 'touristy'. Just for the record, we're not 'tourists' we're travelers :)

We spent the afternoon organising bus tickets and we also went cafe hopping and ended up in an all you can eat Chinese restaurant! It was like $3 for all you can eat (we ordered fresh meals though) but we had endless free entertainment as we watched skinny Czech people seriously gorge themselves on plate after plate of Chinese food.




Cesky Krumlov (more photos after writing!!)

Cesky Krumlov
10th June

We arrived in Cesky K at about 1pm, having booked our hostel (Hostel Skippy) but not actually written down the address or how to get there... so we walked into town from the bus station and looked for the first place with wifi, it was a cafe-bar so we ordered and started up the computer... and we had absolutely no connectivity, so I just asked the waitress and she knew exactly where our hostel was and gave us a detailed map of how to get there! Hooray for small towns and friendly people!!
So we found our hostel which was so nice, its only got two dorms and they don't believe in bunk beds, so its cosy and its pretty much Skippy's house, so there's a kitchen to use and a great little verandah literally hanging over the river. Cesky Krumlov is quite simply Storybook perfect! Its nestled between these curves of the Vlatva river so everywhere you look there is cute bridges and the river and old buildings, its lovely. We explored the town all over (doesn't take long) and then settled in for some cafe time. We decided to make use of Skippy's kitchen and I headed off to the supermarket to see what I could rustle up for dinner (I decided on pasta, with mushrooms and salami- tasty but not very healthy).

11th June

First thing we headed out for a much needed laundry run, then back at the hostel we organised to do a raft trip down the river to the next town. A german couple staying in the hostel the night before had done it and reccomended it for a fun day trip, they said you can do it in 3 hours but they just drifted along and took 6 hours with a picnic basket. So Nick organised the picnic and we got picked up by the rafting guy (who we'd already met at the internet place- thats how small Cesky K is). The weather was fine and we set off paddling in our two man raft... not ten minutes into our 3-6 hour journey and the heavens opended, seriously. and pummelled us with rain so heavy it hurt and we were thoroughly saturated. But eventually it stopped and we enjoyed the rest of the trip (it got sunny again) and we had some little rapids and one biggish one and it was totally fun.
There were quite a few other groups doing the same thing so we came across some interesting folks on the way down, if they were too noisy we just paddled hard until we lost them :) We finished in 3.5 hours so we weren't quite as leisurely as the German pair but we found paddling more fun than just sitting there. We got back to Cesky K still a bit damp so we got dry clothes and headed off to get some of these cinnamon roll things that Nick had been eyeing off since we got there. This teenager (summer job I guess?) makes these bread rolls on a massive skewer then while they're still hot rolls them in cinnamon or sugar and almonds or whatever you choose... we shared a cinnamon one. This poor kid is in about a million holiday snaps all over the world, you have to muscle past the German tourists just to order! We strolled around Cesky Krumlovs castle and took some pretty cool photos of the view. Oh and they have a resident bear at Cesky Castle... yep. Why I don't know!

Then we headed out for dinner at a restaurant where Skippy was performing for the night, she plays guitar and sings (really well) and she had another guy there playing guitar as well. We had dinner with a couple American girls from our hostel, one was a lawyer and the other one... writes instructions for childrens playground equipment!!! She said she gets to set it up too and play on it! what an odd job. We had an early night though because we had to get up at like 5 am to catch the bus to Bratislava!!

12th June

5:30am, pleasant walk back up to the bus station, once there, fought my way through the dense mist of cigarette smoke in the ticket office to ask which platform we were supposed to be on. Finally found the right bus, just in time too because we made our connection in Cesky Budejovice with like 1/2 a minute to spare!!! Stay tuned for Bratislava and the Slovak Republik!! (sorry I just like writing Slovak).


Cesky Krumlovs Castle bridge.

The view from the raft!
Rafting down the Vlatva, saturated and still cold, not sun at that point.

The star of Cesky Krumlov!

The view from Cesky Castle
Even the draincovers are pretty in Cesky Krumlov!
Cesky Krumlov's main square
Our beds at Hostel Skippy
The view of the Vlatva from our hostel balcony
Cooking up a storm
Panograph of Cesky Krumlov in the afternoon light, sorry about the quality, had to lower it for Blogger.