Escapisms

Had an incredibly early start for a holiday as we had a bus to catch at 8.30 this morning. It was thick snow when we woke up and still snowing! Thankfully the bus station that we were leaving from was just over the road from Helena and so we ambled over and waited. It as so cols and I had so many layers on that frankly I felt like they were doing no good at all. I had borrowed some ski gloves off Helena though which were working far better than my gloves. After a while some random little man came over and said something in Czech to the queue that had now formed to get on the so far non-existent bus. He had said that it was running 20 mins late apparently. We were glad when it finally turned up as I have to say I seriously thought that I was going to turn into a block of ice. The bus was heated thank heavens which meant that we could de-robe for a while. There were some ‘lovely’ air freshener things of nude ladies all the way down the bus – nice!!

It probably took longer than expected to get out of Prague because of the snow but after about 3 hours we made it to Cesky Krumlov where we were staying for the night and to explore the sights. It was described as a fairy tale sleepy town. Well, with thick snow it made it look magical I have to say. We tried to go to the tourist information centre but it was closed as was the main attraction of the castle. It was made a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1992. We made our way to our Pension called Pension Anna and were asked for our passports, which of course neither of us had with us! We were given the key to our room which was very spacious and all decked out in a lovely brown colour.

We then went out to have a look around at what was actually open. We went to see this lovely wax museum which was really badly labelled i.e. not at all but we were given a sheet – no that’s not actually true we picked one up- with a description of what everyone does/is but it did not say who was who clearly enough. At the end of the exhibit there were some totally random figures too, it was all most bizarre! We looked around the little streets after having some lunch and a delicious cappuccino. We looked in several little shops all selling handmade ornaments or blown glass. All looked bemused to see tourists and did not go out of their way to serve us! Helena got very worried about the colony of bears that I had told her about that apparently lived in the castle grounds. We went and had a beer in a little cafe where I wrote a couple of postcards and we took the opportunity to warm up for want of something more interesting to do! We then headed back to where we were staying before we headed out for some supper.

We went to a Czech restaurant which was pretty empty apart from an American couple who were all over one another. I had some Czech goulash which was incredibly fatty to put it mildly. Mum and Dad were taking Hugo and some friends out in Bristol this evening to celebrate his birthday as they will be leaving for Egypt on Sunday – what a jet setting family we are!! I joked to Dad that I had had lots of beers but I don’t think that he got the message. I was talking about running machines over supper with Hels and telling her why I don’t run on them only walk briskly and the waiter was just behind me when I was telling her, in what I thought was a quiet voice – apparently not! He gave me a funny look for the rest of our meal! I had to text Rachel as the place was called Don Julius. We went back to the pension after supper for some sleep. We spotted that one of the streets that we walked down was called Horni which had us in stitches! It was nice to be able to sleep in a proper bed rather than the futon even if it was as hard as rock!!