Hotel Nautilus Tabor

(40 miles) Today we were blessed to attend church at the Prague Branch. Very cool experience. Everything was translated for us and we met some fellow American tourists. The Summers and the Tanners are having a lovely time enjoying additional comforts during there two week vacation. They must of had compassion on our frugal ways because they invited us to dinner. We politely declined as we said we had miles to accomplish. We didn't tell them that we ...

... really, but bang on the outside (half-see-through) door very loudly, yelling for help when people walk by. So I do, and the people walk on, probably wondering what a crazy person I am! Luckily for me after about half an hour a couple with children stop. Even more lucky they speak English and German! So after explaining what happened they go find the owner. But he is in another town...on the phone he tells them I should just wait till someone comes in ...

... go to Brno not Stafka. I was eventually thrown out of the train onto the tracks, along with Johnny and our backpacks. When I looked around I saw that I was in a dusty little village called Veseli nad Luznici, along with all the other passengers of our train. That's when it dawned on me that the strike was taking place at this moment and that Stafka was not the city but the Czech word for strike. We found a seat under an awning of the village ...

Písek, city of the sand...we found it in our way to Mira's place, and we took the two pics you can see from the oldest Czech Bridge, which was almost completely covered by the floodings in 2002. It is really beautiful, and it is one of our best pictures (Bea took it) to date, what in the other hand it's not so difficult...

... the caves. We arrive in Brno at 15.00pm where Tash, Julia and i get out the others are taking the bus back to Prague - Tash and i have to hang around till 9pm for our train to Ostravna where we then have to sit for another 2.5hrs for our train to Warsaw - this time round we booked couchettes - this is six beds in a small room basically like bunk beds but with two above Tash and i have the top of course, watching tash climb onto the top top bunk was ...

... the frescoes are on everysurface. The entire town is a work of art, literally. It is more so now than 20 years ago, as they resore the old building layers of fresh artwork is revealed underneath. The main Catherdal town was a muddy brown in te 90's but now pink. The town is fairly tiny, but has an absolutley massive Castle complex. One of the biggest anywhere. It makes up more than half the town which is split on two sides of a meanderign river. Teh ...

... a stop off in Cesky Budejovic, where they make Budvar beer!) and arrived in Krumlov. Yet another pretty medieval town in the south of the Czech Republic with a small population and only a few tourists at this time of year. At every turn this country has more delights to offer. Like I said, this place is not terribly large with heaps to do, or if not is cool to just hang out and chill. First day I will admit ...

... to the staff room for drinks. After slow dancing with about 47 kids we were all knackered and quite rightly went to the staff room for a few deserved drinks. Most nights it was me, Jamie, Klara, Bara, Dr Bob and Mike who stayed up drinking. It was great, mike played his guitar and talking to Bara, Klara and Bob really helped our Czech and they were so much fun to hang out with. On the 3rd night we had a camp fire....which was actually inside due to the rain (the rain ...

... called 'Fuzzy Kangaroo'. The milk content of these *******s led me to clutch my guts and wince on the walk home some hours later. We drank, danced to bad 80's hits and partied on, and as the place filled up with an assortment of total randoms, i found myself in a near incomprehensible conversation with the Head Road Captain of an Austrian biker gang, decked out in leather and silver biker-bling. It was my cocktails talking to his Jack Daniels, pretty much. He couldnt ...

... to part with their gypsy shawls trimmed with fringe. Next we went to St. Vitas Church. I snapped one picture - didn't know it was a No-No - OOPS. There were lots of ropes with warning alarms. We tried to climb the tower, but it was locked. Across from the church was a dance class with little ballerinas at their little bars. We came back to our room, watched a little CNN, more suicide bombers in Israel - just to mess up the whole alleged "Road Map for Peace." Is there any hope? We took a ...