May 30

Yesterday we headed out to Českỷ Ráj (Bohemian Paradise). This area is a very beautiful part of Bohemia full of gorgeous valleys, pastures, old castles and rocks. Some of the villages we drove through look like they have not been touched by time at al. However, most of the farms and houses are really well cared for, nicely painted and the yards are well landscaped.  

After driving through the area we stopped at Prachovské Jeskyňe (Prachov Rocks) which are sandstone rock formations eroded by wind and water into a field of interesting columns and other formations. The National Tourist Board has created some excellent trails through the rocks that wind, climb and squeeze through the various rocks. It was declared a protected area since the mid fifties.

The trails are paths winding through the area and are mostly composed of some form of steps as the climb up is quite long and quite demanding.

Once up on top the views are stunning

It is even possible to make out ruins of an old castle Trosky in the distance

The climb back down is in places even more difficult as the trail snakes between two very close columns and if I were a bit bigger in girth, I might have become part of the landscape.

After visiting the rocks, getting some refreshments and a bit of rest for our legs we continued on to Podĕbrady which is yet another spa town with mineral springs, hotels and a beautiful park. And a famous flower clock. They even rearrange the plants daily to reflect the current date. This picture was taken at 6:00pm. For a bunch flowers, this clock was pretty accurate...

It is also a birthplace of one of Czech Kings Jiří z Podĕbrad 

Phew, that was a full day. I really want to thank my cousin Roman for all the driving. Although the distances are quite short, the roads are narrow and quite winding.

May 28

Today we visited with an old classmate of mine from high school. He lives in a quiet little valley under the Prague Semmering Railway Line. This viaduct is just a couple of blocks from his house.

He has a small company making ready to eat snacks, sandwiches, cheese snacks, fried cheese, utopence (pickled sausages), pickled herring and other very tasty things. He and his wife took us to a typical Czech pub for some excellent beer and some live Czech country and western music. The group was pretty good for a bunch of old guys just sitting around the table, playing music.

As a parting gift, my friend gave us a box of excellent pickled herring

and a box of open faced sandwiches

It was fun getting it home on two buses and a metro train.

The reason that we had to use transit to get home is because Czech Republic has a zero tolerance for drinking and driving and the consequences of being caught with any level of blood alcohol are staggering. People simply don't drink when they have to drive and don't drive when they had a beer. This does not seem to be an issue as the transit system here is really good and you can get to places faster than driving.

May 27

Today we wanted to do something different. We bought tickets on one of the local railway lines linking Prague with Rudná. Rudná is about 40km south-east of Prague. This little commuter line consists of one self powered railway car and it putt-putts a roundabout way out of Prague through some very interesting scenery and several villages.

Our little train

Inside of the car

And here is our final destination. This is a very typical country railway station building.

We did not get a chance to explore Rudna as we only had about six minutes before train took off for the return trip. The next train wasn't due for another two and a half hours.

Worthy of a mention: On monday we took another walking tour through the centre of Prague and saw what is probably one of the best looking Synagogues in the world. It is the Jerusalem Synagogue on Jerusalem Street built in 1906.

May 25

Krkonoše.

Yesterday we drove north to one of Czech mountain ranges Krkonoše. These mountains are on the border between Czech Republic and Poland. It is a very popular destination for skiing and other winter snow sports and also in the summer for hiking and bike riding. The resorts are open year round.

We travelled through many small towns where the main industries were glass blowing and crystal making as well as textile manufacturing. Sadly, lot of the factories are now closed and abandoned.

The view from the foothills into the Czech country is quite spectacular.

The ski resort we visited is one of the big three and its name is Harrachov. It is at the foot of Čertová Hora (Devil's Mountain) It has several excellent downhill ski runs and also has the biggest ski jump in the Czech Republic - Čertovka. 

It is one of the longest Ski Flying ranges and it can accommodate up to 50,000 spectators.

The bottom of the chairlift with kids trampoline in the foreground

Some of the interesting wood carvings.

After visiting Harrachov we drove in the direction of Les Kralovství via small town of Hostinné. This year the town celebrates its 750th anniversary.

The Town Hall tower is protected by a pair of giants.

The Dam at Les Kralovství was build between 1910 and 1914 and finished (to provide electricity) in 1919 (WW1 intervened) It is built in a beautiful mediaeval gothic style, however using modern (1910) building materials such a reinforced concrete.  

The power house with its two turbines has a nominal output of 2.12 Mega Watts.

After visiting the dam we stopped at one of the roadside inns and had a lovely lunch.

Because Harrachov is so close to Poland we drove across the border for a quick visit. Since Poland is also part of EU there is no visible border crossing. The only way you can tell you're in Poland is that all of a sudden all signs are in Polish.

With this last foray into Poland it makes five countries we visited this spring: England (London - Heathrow), Czech Republic, Germany (Dresden), France (Paris) and Poland.

May 24

Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad)
My cousin and his wife have really treated us today. They drove us to Karlovy Vary. Karlovy Vary is a town in the western most part of Bohemia and is a world renown spa town. The town has 13 different mineral springs and each one is said to cure different ills. I have tried them all. It is also said that after consuming said mineral waters, one will need to quickly avail him or herself of the many available toilet facilities. I have no first hand experience with this as I only sampled and sipped the waters.

The town is laid out along the banks of Teplá Řeka (Warm River) and, in fact, the river is warm as some of its composition are thermal springs. By the way, all the mineral spring range in temperature between 30 and 72 degrees Celsius.

Karlovy Vary was founded in 1370 by King Charles IV. there are some remnants of the original settlement, however most of the buildings are  from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. More information is available on Wikipedia under Karlovy Vary.

THis is the colonnade where some of the 13 springs are located 

Teplá Řeka

The Grand Hotel Pupp. This hotel was used in the 007 movie Casino Royale.

Another view of the Colonnade.

Tomorrow off to the mountains.

Paris

Note: Between Cathie and I we probably took over five hundred photos. Because of the internet constraints (only so much gigabytes available) I had to whittle that volume to just a few.

We took a bus tour from Prague to Paris (France that is). The tour was billed as a five day trip and it was broken down into the following schedule:

Day one: We boarded the tour bus at 5:00pm here in Prague and drove overnight through Germany to Paris. Because of the EU regulations for tour bus drivers we stopped about every three and half to four hours to change drivers and use washrooms, buy snacks, etc, at designated rest areas along the freeway.

Day two: Arrived in Paris and began sightseeing. On this day we saw the following:
- Place de Concorde and the Egyptian Obelisk
- Walked through Tulleries Gardens where the small Arc de Triomphe forms a gateway to the Louvre

- We visited the Louvre and saw many works of art including the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo as well as some of the Egyptian artifacts. We only had three hours there which was hardly enough to scratch the surface.
- We walked through Musee de l'armee and the Hotel des Invalides. This was the first convalescent home for war veterans founded by Louis XIV in 1670. At one point it housed 4,000 soldiers. It is still used for the same purpose today.
- Almost across the street was the Rodin Museum and Gardens. As the name implies it is full of Rodin's work and the gardens were studded with some of his work. It made for a very nice and restful spot after a busy morning.

- Back on the metro to Champs Elysees and a quick visit to Arc de Triomphe.

 Unfortunately right at this time the weather turned and it started to rain heavily. However, it did not prevent us from taking a few pictures there and then walking the full 1.9 km length of the boulevard back to Place Concorde to meet our tour bus to take us to our hotel.

- Our hotel (Luxia Hotel) was a very quaint old Parisian hotel. Even the room keys were the old fashion skeleton kind of keys. The hotel was located at the foot of Montmartre and a block from Place Pigalle and two blocks from Moulin Rouge.  Montmartre is a area of a very interesting ethnic mix and it is the centre of Paris nightlife. Worthy of note is the fact that Place Pigalle is the centre of the erotic and sex kind of night life with many sex shops, strip joints, massage parlours and brothels. Of course we did not have any more stamina to explore this part as we were very tired from all the walking and lack of good sleep on the bus, so after finding a nice little restaurant just around the corner and having a lovely dinner we turned in and went to bed.

Day three: As we did not purchase tickets for a tour of Versailles we were left on our own. We decided to do some sightseeing of our own:
- First thing after breakfast we climbed what seemed like a million steps up to the Sacre Coeur Basilica which sits on top of Montmartre. Once we climbed to the top all of Paris seemed to open up right there in front of us.

We also noticed that there is a funicular tram running from the bottom of the hill to the top. We took advantage of this as with our bad knees we find it a lot harder to climb down than up. Once we got down to the street level we found a typical Parisienne cafe and had really good cup of coffee and some raspberry crepes (although we did order strawberry) while sitting at one of the sidewalk tables and watching Paris pass by.

Thus fortified we walked down to Place Pigalle metro station and rode the metro to Assemblee Nationale which was the closest metro stop to the Seine. 

We crossed Quai Anatole and walked down to the river bank. We took a stroll under Pont Concorde and all the way down to Pont Alexander III

and on the way back we detoured via Boulevard de l'universite and Boulevard St. Germain Back to the metro station and back to our hotel. 

We met the rest of the group at five in the afternoon and together we rode our tour bus to Montparnasse tower which is the tallest building in Paris. There is an observation terrace on the 59th floor with a spectacular view of all of Paris. 

Unfortunately the weather was a bit hazy for photography. 

After getting our fill of Paris from above we boarded our tour bus and rode to the river to board an evening cruise of the river. The boat took us under most of Seine's bridges all the way up and around Ile de la Cite which is where the famous Notre Dame is located and back. It was almost one and a half hour long cruise.

Our tour bus took us back to the hotel. Some members of our tour elected to see some of the nightlife at Place Pigalle however Cathie and I just wanted to get a quick bite and hit the sack. We found a McDonalds and had a not very French chicken burger with fries and returned to our hotel and went to bed.

Day four: Our tour bus picked us up and drove us to the Eiffel Tower where it left us. We had about three hours to tour the Eiffel Tower grounds and marvel at the amazing engineering used to build this structure. We did not go up the tower as the line-ups for tickets were incredible.

After visiting the tower we walked across the bridge to the Trocadero which offers an excellent view of the Eiffel Tower. This is where Hitler had his picture taken with the tower in the background during his very short visit to Paris. 

We then boarded the metro and rode it to the Opera House at Place de l'opera 

We had a bit of time to ourselves so we did a little walk about in the area.

After the opera we took the metro to the Latin Quarter where we saw the Pantheon, the Sorbonne and finally Notre Dame.

The line-up to see the interior of the church was at least half a kilometre long curving right around the plaza in front of the church. Although it moved fairly quickly, there was no time to wait in line to see the inside.

The last stop before our return trip to Prague was the La Defense which is the super modern part of Paris. This is a place for modern office towers a large shopping centre and La Grande Arche 

The ants on the bottom of the picture a people sitting on steps in front of the arch.

La Defense is almost like something out of a science fiction movie.

Once we had a chance to shop for some food and snacks for the return fourteen hour trip to Prague we boarded the metro back to Champs Elysees where we boarded our bus.

Day five: arrived back in Prague in the morning

I have many, many more pictures and I will try to post them to Facebook when we get home.

Oh, one more thing, I bought a selfie stick....

May 12

Today was another one of those quick visits which turned out to be an all day outing. We wanted to go to Venceslas Square to get a new map of Prague because the first one was getting pretty ratty. We found the information kiosk and got the new map. 

W continued walking and noticed the tower at the end of Jindrizska Ulice (St. Henry Street). I knew that the tower was accessible to public and in fact had a modern elevator inside so a visitor could ride all the way to the top where there is a beautiful bird's eye view of the Old Town. The tower was founded in 1472.

All wooden internal structures have been removed leaving only the exterior stone walls. A complete concrete tower was built inside the original walls totally separate and not connected with the old stone walls. This is where the modern elevator, gift shop and a two storey restaurant are located.

A view from the tower of Old Town

After the visit of the tower we decided to jump on a tram and ride it to the very end of its line. We came to a place called Divoka Sarka (Wild Sarah) which is another nature preserve and a very nice park located in a natural ravine with some very interesting rock formations.

Naturally, to complete the day's outing, we wanted to sit down a spell and enjoy a cup of coffee and something sweet. The nearest place that would offer this was a McDonalds at the tram terminal so that is where we wound up and got this.

Hmmm, not quite the same as McDonalds at home.

Paris on Wednesday!