Kurhotel Devin Marianske Lazne

... head….goooodddd jobbb!!! That’s my rant for the day!

Well after that we looked for the spas and couldn’t find where to go and then we looked for the tourist office and couldn’t find where to go and we looked for parking and couldn’t find where to go….overall Karlovy Vary was a bust for us so before the frustration set in we decided to head on out to our next destination. Life’s too short to look for parking!

... pan and cook our first dinner this week, so not all bad.

in karlovy vary we buy the teeniest tiniest cup and try some water from every fountain. some taste like blood and we wonder if we have reached dracula country early. oh well, at least we will probably live a few extra years according to the, ah hem, medical advice.

... 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 ...

Back in Canada in the Province of Saskatchewan there is Lake Manitou. The water in this lake has lots of minerals, similar to the Dead Sea properties. You float in it. We have been to the Manitou Spa several times and enjoyed the uniqueness of free floating. At the spa they advertise there are only three places of water in the world with the same properties, one being Manitou, the Dead Sea and the waters at Karlovy Vary, Czech ...

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 ...

... We also were treated to a dinner at the same castle with Mirek's cousin and girlfriend-I of course had the suckling pig......not! But Mirek did have castle goulash with bacon dumplings and says it was yummy! One of our goals was to get to a hockey game and we were fortunate enough to take one on last night, the top league in Czech is the 'Extra Liga" which many former NHL'ers play in including Roman Chechmanek who was playing in net for the team Karlovy Vary ...

... mother working 3 jobs and now overfeeds everyone (out of love, of course), she laid out a major spread for us and kept the food coming, and coming, and coming, you get the picture. Of course it is considered offencive to decline this generosity so needless to say I did not feel too well that night and had a restless nights sleep. After a couple of days in Prague, my uncle Otto (my dad's brother) came from Karlovy Vary to pick us up ...

... in New Zealand and Finland. Great way of travelling as well. Taking the tent, seeing country from a different perspective....hummm not bad at all ;-)) This region is well-known for Rock climbing. At the campsite I stayed that night, lots of people were doing it. One of the things I would love to do as well. Can still remember my high school klettercamp in Germany. Loved every minute of it. Joao, maybe I come to Portugal to learn it from you ...

... one, le awaited interrogation, prison or execution. Well, the story is she had 2 of those Hrabal editions. For whoever is interested one of them is a I served the king of England from 1971- the most repressive years- and the other one, the first book by Hrabal, confiscated and burnt, but which she has in photocopies. And she told me she used to type these books on her weekend nights, in order to keep them.... imagine all the time it took ...