Blogs from Czech Republic, Europe - page 248

Walking the streets of Karlovy Vary it is easy to see that this is a town where, for centuries, people with money, and I mean MONEY, have vacationed. I have never seen a town with so many fancy, five star hotels sitting so close together. Most, not all, but most of these hotels were built during the Victorian era and thus the architecture is ornate and very beautiful. Why do they come to this small city? People come here to drink and bath in the hot mineral waters. I have read that Charles IV found the hot springs when a stag he had shot fell into one of the pools of hot water. A description of the medicinal properties of the mineral waters has been found in a book published in 1522. By the end of ... read more

We enjoyed Karlovy Vary, seeing the sights and sites, watching the people, looking in the shop windows and simply walking around. But what we enjoyed most was hiking through the woods. The mountains around the town are full of walking trails and the forest is beautiful at this time of year. For the most part the trails are well marked and we were able to find our way through the woods, down the mountain and back to the town. And yes, we were careful to stay on the marked trail and not go wandering off on any one of the many unmarked ones. We particularly wanted to see the statue of a mountain goat, a Chamols, that sits on a high rock pinnacle overlooking the city and is one of the prime viewing points. Is ... read more

Czech Republic - 19 Days Diary extracts in italics On day 62 I left my friend in Vienna and entered the Czech Republic. Day 62 - 63.7 miles - (€10) The border patrol checked me out loads for some reason and they had “What the fluff is that?” expressions on their faces. Now gonna camp in the Unesco heritage area of Valtice-Lednice with way to many mossies. Day 63 - 53.7 miles - (€0) I spent the morning looking at old buildings - hunting lodges, halls and monuments in the area - very nice following some cycle paths. Then I headed North towards Brno - I think this is a country where my very vague A-Z of Europe will get me lost, the signs are all signalling the next town or two, my A-Z lists about ... read more

We just got dropped at our hostel in downtown praque. Vera and George are absolutely hilarious. They spent the last couple days with us and we love Praque. George took us on a 8 hour hike through the city and we saw everything we wanted to see. Then last night we went for a night hike to see Praque lit up. It was awesome. Anyways, we drank a couple of good bottles of wine last night and then Nicole noticed that there were ants crawling around on the ground in Vera's flat. George flipped out and was using a magnafying glass to find them and it looked as if they were hunting ants. The pictures we took of this incident were hilarious. Anyways, we are going to meet up with Nicoles friend and go out for ... read more

Moving on from Prague we caught the bus to southern Bohemia to a place called Cesky Krumlov, a small town but one of CzRep's most popular destinations. It's one of those remarkably well preserved towns where the cliches like "you really feel like you've stepped back in time" are true - narrow cobbled streets and great old buildings from various eras (the local aristocrats had to keep up with the neighbours, so facades changed from the Rennaisance to Rococco as they felt like it). I got the feeling it wasn't such a pretty place in communist times, not much to keep people there apart from a mine and other industry on the outsirts of town, but the recent influx of tourists has allowed them to restore most of the buildings. We stepped off the bus into ... read more