EXPLORING PRAGUE!

June 18.09 – Prague

It took us about 4 hours to get ourselves up and ready to hit the road. The campground is surrounded by crop fields and very quiet. Very clean showers and bathrooms, a friendly owner and free internet!! An easy place to hang out and camp. You can catch a bus from the campsite to the metro and then into the center of town. It takes 30 minutes and with a 24 hour transit ticket for $5,00, is a pretty cheap way to go.

We wandered around Prague for the afternoon mostly just looking at all the amazing buildings, statues, squares, churches, and people! Cobblestone streets go for miles through the old town area and across the river up to the Castle. There are shops filled with beautiful bohemian crystal glass, marionettes, handmade wooden toys and more cafes than I’ve ever seen in my life. We stopped for break at one place and the pilsner beer was 31 koruna which is just over a buck eighty CAD or 10RMB for half liter! Our most expensive beer was 125 ($7CAD) Koruna so there’s quite a range depending on where you decide to enjoy your drink.

It was turning out to be quite a hot day . We walked through the old town square and surrounding area and across the Charles Bridge to the other side where we sought out a rooftop restaurant that we read about in the NYTimes just before we left Shanghai. The Aria Hotel up on the 5^th floor has a lovely terraced area with orange umbrellas to match the tiled roofs. It’s just a small terrace, but gives you a view above all the other backyard terraces that are tucked away from the road. We stayed for one drink and then moved on to climbing up the stairs of the Church of St. Nicholas just up the street.

There was one more 93 year deli listed in the NYTImes that we wanted to find so we made that our last target for the day. By some miracle, with the help of Geoff’s iPhone and google maps, we found the deli and had a dinner snack on their ‘little bread’ open face sandwiches ($1.00 each) along with some wholesome Ceczh desserts of poppyseed and ricotta cheese cakes. Time to head back to camp, eventually reach home at 8pm. The sky has clouded over and is looking predictable with rain.

June 19.09 – Camp Drusus - http://www.drusus.com

Woke to the sound of light rain. A strong cup of Oso Negro coffee always helps get

the morning going. Up at 8am with a consensus to forge ahead again into Prague if even for a couple of hours to see St. Vitus’s Cathedral at the castle and be around the beauty of the buildings and statues one last time. The kids want to stay behind and relax in the caravan so we head out at 10am for the bus in the rain. This time we are getting more adventurous and taking a 2^nd metro line into a new area where Geoff has marked the Erhart ova Cukrarna – http://www.erhartcafe.cz as the place to start our day. Eventually we find this quaint little café in a completely different area of town and sit down to enjoy an excellent cappuccino and some amazing custard fruit tarts. The prices in Prague are very reasonable to us Westerners - $10 for 3 caps and a few pastries. By time we are ready to leave the weather has brightened up and it’s perfect for boarding the bus towards the Prague Castle. St. Vitus, is a cathedral one must see while in Prague and admission is free. Absolutely breathtaking!

We walked back across the Charles Bridge, not as busy today, and heard more musicians playing didgeredoo and an old time jazz band complete with an elderly man playing the washboard with two small wisks! We stopped in the old square to take in the Astronomical Clock tower and Catholic Church. More Pilsner Urquell’s while watching the dark clouds and wind move in. The waiter’s take down the umbrellas in seconds and shoo us all inside the restaurant. Time to head back at 3:30pm.

We leave Camp Drusus at 8pm headed for Munchen. Weather will dictate if we do the alpine pass through Austria or not tomorrow. Next stop is Venezia and Camping Fusina. Slept at a carparking pullout just outside Munchen to the sound of steady rain.