Grandhotel Pupp First Class Karlovy Vary

Today was Beer Day. We signed up to go to the Pilsner Urquell Brewery in Plzen (pronounced Pilszen). It is about a one hour drive from Prague. There is also a museum there and some caves about ½ way there. The tour included stopping at the caves which we thought at first were associated with Pilsner Urquell but they are just nice caves.

We hit the museum first which had some really nice ...

Today we went to the Pilsner Urquell brewery in Plzen. Pilsner, the type of beer, originated here, where Pilsner Urquell was brewed from local crops and local mineral water. The tour was awesome. We saw the traditional brew kettles and the modern ones, as well as a very modern new packaging plant. We also tasted some unpastuerized beer directly from fermenting barrels.

Today we managed to miss the early English tour of the castle again (body clocks are totally back to 'normal', none of this unseasonably early rising anymore) by about five minutes, but we bought the tickets for the 12.30 one and then went to the gallery. This was actually really good, and gorgeously cool. The castle was insanely busy, throngs of people were everywhere and there as a good hour's worth of queuing to get into the ...

... 4th floor with 4 large windows overlooking this toy-train town. It was Laurie's birthday so Ryan sprung for what was called the "spa treatment". Well, you know how when you go to a typical spa the options are "massage - Swedish, hot rock, deep tissue"....here you could select from 1 major and 1 minor treatments, which were interesting to say the least. Some of the options were: carbon dioxide bag or bath, iodine bath, lymph drainage by ...

... Proceed to lose over half my money in 4 days completely lost it but didn't realise why i couldn't win at all. Think partly my playing times were to blame playing to many pros during the day. So now i am playing at night and weekends on lower limit tables to build my money up again slow ...

Arrived in Karlstejn on the "City Elephant" train at 1.20pm and walked 2km to the Karlstejn Castle. Went on the 2.30pm English tour of the castle which took about an hour. No photography allowed inside the castle. Took in the views over the town before walking back to the train station and catching the train back to Prague.

... wasn't so cool. For reasons I will never discover, there were bears in pits at the entrance to the castle. Real. Live. Bears. Explain that one to me... Anyway, after that we were given our "free time" (thanks Mr. Stratesky!) and wandered around Old Town in Cesky Krumlov for a few hours. Jessica, Megen, and I found a great little coffeehouse where both the girls got zmerzlina (Ice Cream) and I had a small salad and a cup of green tea. They played American jazz, and ...

... serious floods. The main square is stunning!! Very unfortunate about the masses of tourists and silly stalls selling junk filling the whole area. They also have an astrological clock which goes off every hour though you are lucky to see it through the hundreds of people that crowd around every hour to watch it ding 14 times.(Actually went off 14 times at 2pm which is the first clock I have ever heard ding according to the 24hr clock, interesting). Must say the clock in ...

... Lea, Minnesota. He and his family have been here for thirteen years. Along with the church here he has a church and school in Pilzen, about 60K away. His father is a second generation Czech. The parents were here visiting and we got to meet them. The church has an 11:00 service in English and we have been attending. Last week there were about 30 people in church. Life here is very different for us. Since we don't have a vehicle, we have to rely on our feet and public ...

... very emotional was the Pinkas Synagogue... Built in 1535, it was later made into a memorial to all of the Jews of Czech murdered by the Nazis. In very small but fine print are the names and dates of the 80,000+ Jews (including small children) who died so unjustly. The rooms were deathly quiet. Searching alphabetically, we found several family names Karpel, Karpelus and Karpe including Amil Karpe and his daughter Amilie Karpe. Eventually, we hooked up with our friends Greg and Alexia ...