Hotel Stein Cheb

Time for a short one after that mammoth of a blog for Prague. Ha that rhymes.

Well we left Prague and had 2 choices. Down towards the town of Plzen, and the home of Pilsner beer, or up towards Karlovy Vary, famous for its natural healing waters and its spas. We chose Karlovy Vary since Chris had had his fill of beer in Prague and Plzen was a little out of the way. We also hoped to maybe get some Spa time in but unfortunately fate was against us there ...

After a few hours we reached Bayreuth where we picked up Reena, Wilfried's wife and we went to Hof, this is where my grandmother grew up and spent her childhood. Wilfried’s sister still lives in the house so we were able to tour the house and how all the stories my grandmother told me made so much more sense. I had never imagined it to be like this but this is why it was so amazing to see it. Wilfried also took ...

we finally arrive, after twisting jules arm relentlessly, but too late for the bus, cannot wait for two more hours, so we jump in a taxi only to find we have booked ourselves into the gulag, no i mean it. we are staying in prisoner cell block F. we think of crying, but dont want to show fear to the locals.

we do manage to find a ...

... the whole hotel is empty! We get room 16 on the 3rd floor. We go up to see it and when we open the door it smells of smoke, so we go back down to ask for a non-smoking room. We are now on the 1st floor in a non-smoking room. It is huge. All the furniture looks hand-crafted.

We notice the man has several large ...

... other complaints.

We enjoyed our stop even though it wasn’t what we were expecting. We have a cute little china cup for our Christmas tree decoration.

We are close to the German border so we use all our Krouns for diesel and leave Czech Republic. It most certainly is a beautiful country along the west side. We passed fields and fields of poppyflower heads. It must have been beautiful when they were all in bloom!

Sitting in the living room of the house that will be 'homebase' for the next few months. Weird to think that this time last week we were just pootling around Sydney doing our thing!

Trip via HongKong was great - 2 nights and two days of shopping overwhelm and yummy food. We managed to cram in quite a bit pulling a marathon 12 hour day seeing the sights. Jarrad had the benefit of my shopping expertise and made some good purchases!

Arrived in Munich on my ...

We took a day trip to this beautiful crystal and spa town. It is noted for its water. People come from all over. It is suppose to help ailments of all kinds. There are several places in town that sell ceramic vases to use to drink from the fountains throughout the city. We strolled around for several ...

... The standimg room tickets were $4, a hot dog was $1 ad a 1/2 litre of beer was $1.56-CRAZY! The calibre of hockey is high and the atmosphere was awesome-lots of singing and chanting. 80% of the attendees were sporting team colors and the most popular accessory was a scarf with the team colors which was waved wildy after a goal-unfortunately, we scored one lass goal than the other team and lost 2-3 in overtime, but what fun despite standing in concrete ...

This day trip to Karlovy Vary is a must.

It is such a beautiful city famous for its hot springs. Nice beautiful houses, and the river running through the city makes the place a paradise.

Don't forget to buy (a rose).....it is about a real flower rose which is left for quite a time in the hot springs and the result is amazing ...

I have to mention that contrary to all other pictures on my travelogues none of the pictures I'll be showing under Marienbad are mine. I've been to Mariendbad three times as a teenager. But in those days I wasn't interested in taking pictures. I do however want to give you images to make sure you can ...