Cesky Krumlov & Norma, Penny and Albert

Today we are parked outside the Pilsner Brewery in Plzen where Jason is doing a tour. Its stifling hot here at 34 degrees. Jason will be enjoying the coolness of the brewery. Yesterday we drove from Cesky Krumlov, one of those places that’s been on the bucket list. We stayed the night in a car park right next to the castle. A beautiful town set on the river, loads of people travelling down in rafts and kayaks. It’s a quirky place and the castle and its grounds very impressive. The town a twist of cobbled streets, bars and restaurants. I love the unusual and here you get to see dolls in windows, statues of fingers and ornate bar stools. It’s obviously a major tourist place and its bus after bus of tourists. It’s definetly worth a visit and you can walk around the whole place in about 2 hours.

Yesterday we saw Norma, Penny and Albert…..who are these people you say. They are the names of supermarkets here. As well as the normal TESCO, and Lidl. I love the names its like they couldn’t thing of a brand so just use people’s first names. The drive yesterday included the mother of all traffic jams. Stopped before you hit the 1000mt of queue signs, we sat for over half an hour not moving, the other side coming in 2-3 bursts. This included 2 ambulances, to which we thought, oh there is an accident . No it was road works that consisted of 400 meters and loads of road workers sat on the side of the road. As I built roads in NZ for two years, lets just say if you thought our road workers were lazy, they are not. 30-40km backed up behind us we reckon as it’s a main road, we finally set off and the drive became more pleasant, thousands of apple trees, lines the edge of the road, apple windfalls scattered all around. We wondered if people pick them as they are everywhere.

Last night we stopped in Nepomuk, appropriately named for the lake colour. The dogs loved the free run they had in the forest and the swim in the lake. Loads of families swimming and floating on rafts trying to cool from the heat of the day. The internet here in the Czech republic is average and a little hard to send and receive depending on where you are. Today we hope to head onto Karlovy Vary. We are delaying our time to Prague as temperatures head towards 35+, way to hot for us and the dogs.