Pivo in Plsen

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So we made it to the holy grail: Plzen, the home of the Pilsener style of beer and of Pilsner Urquell, arguably the worlds most famous.

The town itself is quite small, and centres around a large square dominated by the Cathedral of St Bartholemew. Its quite a small church but its tower is one of the tallest in Bohemia and so we had to climb it. The views were great, and in the not so distant distance we could see the Pilsner Urquell brewery.

Spent the next day or so checking out the town: the underground tunnels where private pubs were located and beer chilled, the brewery museum where we learnt everything we didnt need to know about the history of Corbs favourite beverage and in particular Pilsner Urquell, and the worlds third largest synagogue which was showing an awesome photographic exhibition by the late Czech composerconductorphotographer Eduard Ingriš. It was great. Weve been enjoying more of the hearty Czech cuisine: dumplings, goulash, meat, meat and more meat and of course trying the local brew. We mananged to visit all of the key pubstavernsrestaurants in the history of Urquell, though funnily enough the one that we just stumbled into on our first day was actually the best. Go figure.

The brewery tour itself was pretty cool, in fact the cellars were freezing. We had taste testings of the unfilltered, unpasteurised brew which was kinda cool. Corb winked at the brewer and got seconds. It was neat experience though unfortunately the on site restaurant is so overhyped and busy that it was kinda crap: bad service and my food was terrible. Oh well, I fixed that by picking up some Milka chocolate on the way home at Tescos :0

We also met a nice guy named Martin who invited us along to see his band play. We headed out to a funky little bar-café and watched their set - mostly funkjazz he could really play guitar. A good night.

Today we headed off to the Plzen Zoo. We saw some neat stuff like Komodo Dragons, Pigmz Marmosets, Bactarian Camels and some cute little goats and piggies, but unfortunately it was too small and many of the animals seemed pretty sad. The brown bears were not happy chappies and the ocelots paced too and fro in their tiny cages. The eagles and condors were tied down at the foot, allowing the public to get within centimetres of them but preventing them from flying even a few feet off the ground, it was horrible to see.

Now we are just relaxing and enjoying the afternoon sunshine before we set off tomorrow. Undecided as to where we will head to next, one of the Ceskys no doubt. One thing I did find funny though, Beer in Czech is "Pivo".... in China its "Piju"...crazy.

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