Slavia Prague

The morning disappears quickly as we research and make arrangements for our transportation to Budapest. It is so much harder to do this communally. There was an inexpensive bus that only had a few seats left. By the time there was concurrence, it was a day later and seats were gone. Next we check on a train which does have a night option but is almost always far more expensive. It takes quite a while ...

This morning was an early start on the bus as we made our way to Prague. We spent the afternoon looking around this berautiful city. Again so much history...but unlike Berlin it was largly unaffected by the WW2 bombings as Hitler liked the city and did not want to see it destroyed.

That evening we headed to the old town square for dinner which was very surreal. Sitting in the middle of the old square in Prague soaking up the scenery and atmosphere ...

... of locations suitable for holding congresses. One of the indisputable advantages of holding a congress in the Czech Republic is the value of the services provided as compared to the price. The price of your event will be at a reasonable level, even while maintaining highly professional services. This applies doubly if you decide to organise your meeting outside of the capital ...

... city taking in the 'dancing house' building by Frank Gehry and also along the river front. We went to the train station and inquired about the train to Slovakia and found one leaving at 18:30. We put in the time till then and after a slight miss-calculation by Gary involving different train stations in Prague we got the train at 21:53 to Bratislava. A journey taking 5 and a half hours.

... Castle. It is definitely more appealing from the bottom of the hill looking up. It seemed the castle was more or less an old cathedral in the middle of a bunch of modern building used as museums and offices. The hike up did give us another impressive view. This time of the city of Prague. Not as nice as the view of Florence but still very nice. On our way down we noticed a very interesting wall in the distance. From where ...

... up and give the driver the site information, we head off in a warm car about 0145, I cant feel my cold toes anymore and I need the loo. We stop a few times, he refers to the map and I start to worry when he mutters and rubs his eyes and face with his hands annoyed. In the end in broken English he tells us he read the wrong area and that in Czech there are many names that are similar other than a letter or accent, so we are in the wrong place. Not to worry he knows where we need ...

... time I have left, not thinking about it!) and there are plenty of funny things I've noticed. So I'll list them here, to give you some feeling for the place, from a naive Aussie who struggles to remember the word for 'thankyou' in Czech. So probably I am missing plenty of the local character and vibe! What I like: *They like lighting the city up at night. It looks cool. *They like ...

... local dishes. We opted for an informal stroll towards the apartment for brief siestas and showers. During this walk, we spotted two shady guys walking very close to us and whispering to each other. We were all very aware of them, and each put a hand on our purses and/or wallets. We later learned that Brian saw them scheming on how best to pick our pockets from a reflection in a store-front window. Once they realized we were onto them, they quickly walked the other way. This brings me to ...

... and murdered. But now, it is ironically one of the biggest tourist attractions in Prague. Looks like the people owe them alot... We also saw the Torture Museum today - very pain-staking to even read about. The instrument with the pointed arrow head to which women and men were afixed to the top of and weighed down with weights strapped to their ankles was probably the worst. One and a half days to go and then off to the hills!!

... Greece so it'll be good to have a travel buddy again for few days before I head back to London for the last time. On the plus side though, the weather is looking promising, we got some snow on the way home last night and it was snowing pretty solidly when I woke up today and it should continue. Well that's me again, I think from here it'll be back to the hostel for a bit of a lie down before finding some grub and I think settling in for an early night.