Hotel Pangea Telc

... tasty.

Our trip through beer land at an end, we climb into the van to go to the Koneprusy caves. They are living caves with three levels but we can only visit 2 levels. Lots of steps, around 500. My legs are quite irritated that I went through the whole cave. Thought to give my hip some rest today by going on a tour. Opps. Forgot walking in caves is never restful for arthritis.

Fun day

... put before him...


The tour starts with the production line - the cleaning of recycled glasses, the airation & subsequent dispensing of beer into glasses and laser scanning of the bottles for imperfections, this was pretty much how it worked for the cans aswell (minus the recycling step).

If I could bore you with all the ...

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.

... 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.

... between crossing the border and this lovely moment, which I of course will share with you! Crossing the border into Czech Republic...what a great feeling! Getting closer to my final destination. One thing I notice straightaway is the asian market, which are at many bordercrossings nowadays. Selling things cheap to Germans and Czech people. This country has become far more expensive since the joining the EU, so it harder for people to make living ...

... like fun to get out of the flat for the day, so I went with them. Leah bought us bus tickets for 8:00 a.m. We met on the corner of our street at 7:20 and took the metro to the bus stop. The bus was full on the way there and it took us about 2 1/2 hours to get there. Big surprise, I was getting a little car sick as the roads were very curvy. From what I saw, it was very pretty terrain. We ...

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.

... to long ago in 89 at the end of Communism when the place was a ghost town, all decayed and falling apart. Now it's had almost all been restored thanks to the magic of capatist dollars. Of course there has to be some balance as the town will just be a disneyland of Bohemia if it gets out of hand. At the moment there are still old streets just as they've always been just behind the freshly painted facards. Next morning 5.30am start. Ouch! A very bleared eyed group made their was accross ...

... hype that it gets, it was a nice city but it didn't really stand out for as a particularly beautiful city or particularly lively. It certainly is a quiet time of year as the cold is certainly starting to set in and keep people away. Nonetheless, I did have a few fun nights out and some good cheap meals. That is probably the main things that stands out for me in Prague was the pubs, I came across a few really nice, rustic basic ...