Orea Hotel Bohemia Marianske Lazne

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 ...

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 ...

... br>We leave and go to see the colonnades, these are fancy walkways with pillars that have little fountains where the thermal water comes out. People are walking along with fancy china cups. The handles are really spouts to drink the water from. They go to the water taps, fill their cups and stroll along drinking the water. The water is warm and at some stops hot water.

We bought a very tiny cup and tried the water. I ...

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 ...

... then enjoyed a lunch of duck,dumplings and sweet and sour cabbage. I swear Greece and Czech Republic have the best food in the world. I am going to miss it. We will return tomorrow to Amsterdam to connect with our flight home. We are hoping to make the Anne Frank museum if the lines are not too long.

... region is also known for the quality of it's porcelein and we also went to one of the factories to get some porcelein dishes as well, needless to say, our suitcases will be heavy and fragile on the way home!-but it's worth it :) We head back to Prague tomorrow, so we are spending the day seeing a few more things here and getting organized for the trip back, luckily we have a ride back with Mirek's uncle. We'll update from there..... Celina and Mirek Pollos Libres

... are flat crisp wafers filled with a hazlenut/sugar flavoring about 10" round. They are exported around the world but here is the only place you can have one fresh hot off the press, so we did, several in fact. (my parents used to buy them for my sisters and I on the promanade, and the same shops still exists) We'll continue with more exploits from Karlovy Vary in the next update. Nashledanow (Goodbye in Czech) Celina and Mirek/Pollos Libres

Although I reached my final destination in Czech by now, I do want to jump back in time and tell you about the things that happened after I left Bamberg... which seems like ages ago now as lots and lots has happened in between ;-)) It had the perfect farewell present from Bamberg, the internet stuff took much longer then I thought, so I had a late lunch at my favourite spot by the tree overlooking the river and rathaus. Then I hear drumming... Of ...

... an obvious change in built form; however the natural scenery was much the same. While the track from Germany had been unwired the Czech Railways had electrified all of the Czech lines, including the yard at Cheb and our onward trip to Mariánské Lázne. The 10 minute connection from our DB train was not the issue it could have been as our train arrived perfectly on time and the onward train was due into the platform across from the on which we arrived. Technically both ...