sat in the van near Brno and drinking "Tesco English Breakfast Tea"! It is
really quite odd to be this far from home and doing the weekly shop at
tesco, although certainly makes life easier as alot of the labels are
English. Some would say thats cheating I guess!
Since I last wrote on here we have been to Plzen, back into Germany
briefly, and then on to Tabor and Telc. All the places we have been have
been fantastic and really interesting and this could therefore be in danger
of being an incredibly long entry, so I think I will try and keep it to a
paragraph a place followed by some photos in the hopes you will all keep
reading?
Plzen has a number of claims to fame. Obviously number 1 is that it is home
of Pilsner Urquell, however it is also the home of Skoda and has the third
largest Jewish Synagogue in the World. We restrained from the brewery tour
but of course sampled the local brew a few times! The town square also has
some beautiful buildings covered with what they call sgrafitto, an
intricate black and white painting.
On our arrival in Plzen I was greeted with the coolant warning light on the
dash board, and so started a week of more trips to garages! We mustered
our best czech (courtousey of google!) and braved the garage in town. They
poked and proded but couldn't find anything wrong so sent us off with a
free bottle of glycol just in case! Chris put his mind to finding the leak
and fabricated a dip stick for the coolant tank out of a pencil and a bit
of card. Doing this kind of trip makes you quite imaginative at times!
We left Plzen on route to Cesky Krumlov, but as I pulled onto the dual
carriage way I realised we were even more lacking in power than usual as I
couldn't get us beyond 70kmph. We decided the best thing to do was to give
her a run on the slower roads and see what happened and an hour later
stopped for lunch in Klatovy (another pretty town) to find that we were
still losing coolant. To cut a long story short we then decided to run back
into Germany where we speak the language to get it sorted. Between two
German gargages we got three problems fixed and by the end of the week were
raring to go again.
Whilst we were in Germany we also went to visit Chris's brother and family
in Regensberg. We had a nice afternoon in the town ( I went clothes
shopping!) followed by a lovely evening in a local beer garden. Melanie,
our niece is now just over a year old, starting to walk and very cute!
With a (fingers crossed) fully fixed van we headed back into the Czech
republic and to a place called Tabor. We were drawn here for the town
itself but also some nearby caves. Again the town had a great square with
some beautiful buildings. We also visted the town museum. Tabor is the home
of the hussite movement and the museum chronicled the history of the
religious wars. All quite interesting although we were disappointed not to
see the prototype tank, a cart with rifles attached, promised in the
guidebook. We joined in the fun at the campsite bar the night we arrived,
sheltering under their terrace from the most phenomenal rain and listening
to a live band. Unfortunately the evening was cut rather short when the
band decided that rain, thunder, lightening and electric guitars are not a
good combination!
On Tuesday we moved on to Telc, and a fantastic little campsite in the
hills above town. Telc is a UNESCO world heritage site and has the most
beautiful old town centre, surrounded by medieval fishponds. We spent a
couple of days exploring the town but as the weather has been amazing with
temperatures in the 30s we availed ourselves of the swimming lakes in the
surrounding hills after some great cycling though the woods. I also spent a
lovely morning in the square sketching in my straw hat and can actually say
for the first time I am quite pleased with the results!
So sorry not quite a paragraph a place but we have been having a great time
here and there is so much more I could talk about. I guess that will have
to wait for the stories when we get home. So time to sign off for a while.
Hopefully the next entry will be from Slovakia.
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