Marttel Karlovy Vary

... tasty.<br><br> 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.<br><br> Fun day

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>

... to the top there were quite a few people just chilling up some were even pretty old - they seemed to be in good shape I didn't think anything of it. Immediately I was impressed with their ability to climb the mountain. In fact I thought to myself that I hope I can be as active as them when I am their age. I was really astonished. Then as I began to walk more, I started to notice a lot of people - a lot more old people ...

... but there you go. The exhibition was good, he uses some pretty extreme subject matter and of course there was another Sipek connection, as Saudek collaborated with him on an Absolut campaign... We then made our way back up to the castle, to take the tour, but managed to miss the last English tour for the day by about ten minutes, so we just wandered around the grounds and took some happy snaps.

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.

... I thought I would do my normal wander aimlessly thing in town, but it was so cold here this weekend. I ended up going to a couple of museums. Emily this week had some friends stay in our room with us. That was... ummm, MISERABLE. These rooms are almost too small for two people, let alone 4 girls and all their ****. I absolutely didn't want to be at home this weekend. I came on this trip to learn things about myself, this week's lesson is I LIKE MY PERSONAL SPACE! I also ...

... two other bags to protect and I'm supposed to go to Italy or Germany? Ugh, I'm freaking out. I need to go back to my dorm and do some serious looking at the material Krista printed for me and see what looks possible. The Slet was cool. It was kind of a downer meeting up with Skye, she was in a horrible mood and not adapting well to Europe. Whatever.

... television channels: BBC, CNN, National Geographic, and two others we don't watch. We also get a wonderful, eclectic, music station from France called Mezzo. Sometimes Animal Channel is in English. We really like the custom of removing your shoes as soon as you enter an abode. Most places have shelves or bins directly inside the door for your shoes. Ours are three bins behind the front door. If the weather is particularly sloppy, you will find some people leaving them outside ...

... t know, Marty had his wallet stolen out of his front pants pocket two days after we arrived. We were on the tram. The men were so adept that we didn't know the wallet was gone until we got home and started emptying our pockets. No money lost, but credit cards, phone numbers, driver's license, insurance card, etc. We were able to get the cards cancelled quickly enough so that we had no losses. Through our friend BG, we have been introduced to a woman who wants tutoring in ...