Holiday Inn Congress Center Prague

... headed back to the hostel to get changed and grab dinner. We went to a spirits bar close to the hostel for dinner and I had an assorted meat plate including steak, pork and chicken and a greek salad. Again the meal only cost me like $13 canadian dollars. After dinner we headed back to the Hostel and I got a hold of Austria Stephan's friend Dominik that lives in Prague and he was heading down to a sports bar to watch a football game. He gave me the address and I headed ...

... part of the plant but one line was running so we saw the bottles scuttle past on their way to being filled.

We wound our way through the plant and saw a multimedia presentation on the brewing of Pilsner Urquell. They mash it or boil it three times which is unusual. They also hop it three times. Using Saaz hops from the region. A few years ago, there were several natural hops ...

I seemed to have developed a taste for beer on this trip (partly b/c it's too hot to drink wine!!) and no tour to Czech republic would be complete with a tour of the Pilsner Urquell brewery...


The town of Pilsner is fairly nondescript (ie/ it has no redeeming features, other than a summer installation of a pilsner beer garden and a bouncy ...

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.

... that the next cab ride would be to a hotel actually IN Prague. As I left the cab, 600 Crowns lighter, I thanked my cab drive suggesting that he might have had a brilliant career in the post-Soviet kleptocracies. Who knows? Maybe he headed up one of them and found scamming tourists more lucrative!

I checked out the next morning leaving the bad taste behind and headed for a much more traveler friendly hotel right in the heart of the ...

... home to a plethora of other attractions that give good indication as to why the courtyards are bustling with so many tourists.  We visited their fine art collection that wasn't huge but it was well put together with its works by the likes of Rembrant, Rubens, and Goya.  We then checked out the Old Royal Palace that was pretty but not inspiring although they had one neat room where the coats of arms of the past rulers were painted on the ceiling and walls like a ...

... In front of the National Museum, there was a protest going on against a US radar base. From the Prague Post: (http://www.praguepost.com/articles/200 8/03/19/radar-protest-aimed-at-embassy. php) "More than 1,200 people gathered in Malį Strana March 15 for the latest protest against a U.S. radar base on Czech soil planned as part of a U.S. missile-defense shield in Central Europe. Organized by local civic organization No to Bases, the demonstration ...

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.

... from Atlanta, said, "Did you see the babies on the tower?" Well, we hadn't, and at first seeing them at night I thought it was some odd coincidence that it looked as if babies were crawling up this huge tower. But it is not a coincidence: there are about 10 baby forms going up and down the tower, looking very unsafe. Two of them are about to meet each other, one going up and one down, and that's really strange, as if they don't know what happens next. It is very bizarre; it is an ...