Hotel Gondola Pilsen Plzen

... plus a large hop warehouse fire and the worldwide hop supply was dwindling while growers had to replant. Now the hops are back and it isn&#8217;t quite a crisis anymore.<br><br> We are finally down to the cellars after going past the large copper covered tanks where the beer is mashed and hops added. Down here we are treated to a new beer. It has not yet been filtered and pasteurized but boy is ...

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...<br> <br><br>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.<br>

... we camped at this weird, seemingly abandoned hotel. After we ride miles out of our way to get there this lady tells me in broken few words and mostly hand gestures that we can't stay there it's only for people of an association. I'm not sure if it was my puppy dog eyes or my deadly looks but in the end she let us camp out back. It was kinda weird because we were the only ones there.

... charm, but with a patina of decay, the legacy of communism and several subsequent political unheavals. This country has one of the most fascinating political histories and we look forward to learning more as we explore. We are already crashing our way through Slavic Languages 101. I was getting a little cocky in Germany, where I was starting to get by pertty well after only a week, because there are enough similarities to English to start connecting dots. Well, THAT has certainly ...

... never drink beer the same way again. By this time we were famished and decided to grab lunch in the brewery's restaurant/beer hall. The restaurant was absolutely incredible, huge plates of traditional Czech cuisine with enormous never ending mugs of beer; it was quite possibly the best meal I had during my entire stay in Europe. After the meal we went back to Zach's Pub for a nightcap where we met some people from Ireland and we ...

... show the driver my ticket and he blurts some phrase at me. It didn't seem like a no, so I just sat down and hoped it all works out. In the end it did, the bus left shortly after I got on ended up transporting us to the train station at Plzen. I had to take a bus from Plzen to the same city again to get home as well. I am not sure why we had to get off the train; I assume there was working being done on the ...

... outside too long. Since we had had a Christmas service on the Sunday before, we decided against going out in the cold for 10pm Midnight Mass. We had tickets for a 4:00pm Christmas Day concert. The fantastic, truly gorgeous, 18th century, high baroque Church of St. Nicholas provided a wonderful setting for the concert. Mozart played the organ here in 1787. Fortunately the concert was only an hour long. Like most churches here, St. Nicholas is not heated. We had warned the Klugs ...

... at 7 and breakfast in the room. Since MS didn't have a transit pass, we walked down to the station and bought him one. Went to Tesco supermarket. We went to a "fast food" restaurant near the tram stop downtown. FM had a huge hamburger, fries, and a beer. MS had chicken shish kebob, fries, slaw, and a beer. Total bill was $6.40! And it was good! We did have to buy the ketchup for the fries. Tram back to the room to get ready for the rental agent. Snow flurries and intermittent sun ...

... rain, i found myself in the holiest of sanctuaries, the breweries waiting room, watching the clock tick by, wanting it so desperately to tell me that it was now half past twelve. While i anxiously glanced over the surroundings, as other beer devotee's start to stroll in for the daily tour, i catch a glimpse of the Breweries pamphlet titled, "What would you like to know". What secrets would it divulge, mysterious stories passed down through ...