Photos: Czech Republic

There are more photos to come, but for now, here is the Czech Republic. Click on the thumbnails.

Prague

Kutna Hora

Cesky Krumlov

Last Day in Europe

As our flight out on Sunday was from Prague, we caught the train back from Budapest and, after a seven-hour journey and hostels for the past three weeks, indulged in our only accommodation splurge on the trip for our final night in Europe -- a five-star hotel. It was nice to have a good shower and comfortable bed in a clean room.

That Saturday night we went out to see the National Marionette Theatre company perform the Mozart opera Don Giovanni, a well-known performance with tall marionettes that has been performed continuously since 1991. At two hours, we thought it might be a bit long to keep us from getting bored, but it was very good -- very skilfull and quite humorous, and we really enjoyed it. We loaded up on mojitos afterwards at a Cuban bar and went back to the hotel splattered.

Mai Li almost left me behind in Amsterdam the following day. When we got to the Prague airport three hours early, as is our usual practice (and once again we found use for the additional hour) this grim-faced monotoned golem at the counter checked us in, giving us each a boarding pass from Prague to Amsterdam and another for the Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur leg. Airside, we bought some slivovice (iconic Czech plum brandy) and had to show our boarding passes for the duty-free rate, and noticed that the idiot had given us the two boarding passes from Amsterdam in Mai Li's name, sitting in completely disparate rows, no less. So, we had to get back out through customs to get to the transfer desk, where they laughed at how they had never seen such a gross error, to have my boarding pass reissued. Had I not noticed, I wouldn't have been able to get on the connecting flight in Amsterdam!

So now we are in Malaysia, spending a week visiting with Mai Li's family. On Monday, we go to Cambodia for four days to see the ancient temple complex Angkor Watt, after which we return to Sydney, so I don't expect to update this blog until sometime after August 10th. I then aim to edit, distill (from over 700) and upload all the trip photos in August or September.

After Prague

The last day in Prague we took a day trip to Kútna Hora, a town which boomed on silver and rivalled Prague in influence in the 17th century before it stagnated when the silver ran out. One of the legacies of its wealth is St Barbora Cathedral, which the guidebook tells me is as grand as the more famous St Vitus Cathedral in the Prague castle (which we were dissuaded from entering by the queue, which had developed its own border crossing).

Kútna Hora is also famous for the bone church, where the bones of 40,000 people interred there have been assembled into elaborate chandeliers, a giant coat of arms, and other macabre contortions of the human body. Not sure what they would have thought of that. Unfortunately, though, we dragged our arses that morning and then had to wait two hours for the train, so it closed before we reached it.

Prague Castle

From Prague

Golden Lane in Prague Castle, featuring Kafka's sister's house (the blue one) where he lived for a year and wrote a book of short stories. It's now a shop which sells books, including the one I'm talking about, which I bought.

Wrecked.

Holidaying is hard yakka. Yes, you mugs at work have got it easy. Up again
this morning at 5 a.m. and I've only just lain down to bed at 8:30 p.m.
We've been on our feet for about 12 hours, and longer yesterday. Hard work
with jet lag and a cracked rib, but we've had a good look at the Charles
Bridge and Prague Castle.

The tram is the easiest way to get to the Prague Castle. We bought a
24-hour transit ticket on Friday which ran out before we returned from the
castle to the Old Town on Saturday. The ticket machines at the tram stops
only take coins and we didn't have enough, so having caught transit several
times and never been bothered we decided to chance it without a ticket
until we could get to a tobacconist to buy another couple of 24-hour
tickets, but the plain-clothed transit officer sitting at the tram stop who
overheard our plans and boarded our tram fined us 700 crowns ($50) and
kicked us off. More walking.

Prague's cobblestone streets

City of Kafka and Velkopopovický

Arrived in Prague at 08:30 and caught public transit into the centre of Staré Mesto (Old Town) where we are staying. We really didn't do anything on the first day, just spent it orienting ourselves, eating and drinking the delicious Czech beer.

The rib I suspect I cracked keeping goal in the last soccer game has been grieving me a bit -- nothing major, but I feel it when I lean over or lift things a certain way. Not the best when backpacking.

Jetlagged, we had a nap in the afternoon and went to bed early, about 21:30. We understand why the locals are tourist cranky, given that there were some loud British and Italian drunken tours at it in the street four floors below us until 04:30, by which time we just decided to get up and check out the Charles Bridge at dawn before it was mobbed by the swarming tourists.