photos gloious photos

tabor, telc, a not very flatering picture of me sheltering from the rain
and poor old jamjar back in the garage

Time for an Update

Well it really is more than time for an update. I am writing this tonight
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.

Taking the Water

8th July 2009

So here we are in country number 7 - the Czech Republic. With the exception of getting in and out of the UK we have not had any passport checks at the borders and yesterday was the same. The border posts are still very much in evidence here but fenced off as they have recently joined the shengen group. I am getting used to the lack of ceremony when we change country and it certainly makes moving around easier, but we have taken to humming the national anthem as we drive across a border just so something happens! This is the first country on our trip (not counting home) that is not Euro and we are getting used to dealing in 100s. Lunch yesterday cost over 400 koruna which in reality is about £12.

Karlovy Vary - the town where we are currently based - is a great spa town. Yesterday we spent the afternoon exploring. There are lots of grand art nouveau buildings and collonaded walk ways. The spa water comes out of the hill side at 70 degrees celcius and is then pipped to lots of points along the collonades. You can fill a bottle or cup for free and sample so of course I had ago. The one I tried was at 50 degrees and it has to be said not very nice! As Chris kept telling me I'm sure it is "good for me" but I hope you will agree that water that can be described as thick is not meant for human consumption!

In one room of the spa the water jets 15m into the air (picture) and people come to sit and breath the vapors. A speciality here is making stone roses by dripping the spa water over fresh roses and allowing the minerals to coat them. I am abit worried about my insides......I do feell quite good today though so maybe there is something in it!

Monsoon Germany

So here I am this morning sat on a park bench in Coburg, Germany, waiting
for the laundry to go through. The weather is fantastic and this town is
beautiful. It is the home of the Sax Coburgs and the place where Queen
Victoria's husband Albert grew up. Consequently there are lots of half
timbered houses, ornate old buildings, a castle and a palace.

Since my last post we have been heading almost due East and have managed
some walking, a few museums and a couple of castles! One of the highlights
has to be our visit to the Langen Foundation near Dusseldorf. This is an
art gallery designed by Tadao Ando housing Japanese Art and is a fantastic
building. We also visited the German wire museum where we discovered just
how important wire is in our daily lives!

.............some time later.......We are now sheltering under a cafe
umbrella from the usual afternoon thunder storm. This is very much the
pattern of the last week with baking sunny mornings and baking wet
afternoons followed by humid evenings.

Before the rain we spent a great afternoon exploring the castle and palace
here. The palace was interesting with the most amazing stucco ceilings but
the castle definately won the day, as a hill top fortress, or more
accurately a village surrounded by three rings of fortified walls. We move
on from here tomorrow towards the czech republik which am very excited
about.